
Shall the Republic Live 








- 































Shall the Republic Live 


By 

Bernard Suttler 

Atlanta, Georgia 


Paper Cover 25 Cent* 


Atlanta 

A. B. Caldwell Publishing Company 

1917 






Copyright 1917 
By BERNARD SUTTLER 
Atlanta, Ga, 

All rights reserved 




RURAL1ST PRESS. INC.. ATLANTA. GA. 


This Book is Dedicated to 

GIFFORD PINCHOT 


of Washington, D. C. 
and Milford, Pa. 


j^JOW a private citizen, who while in the 
public service set such a high standard 
of fidelity to the common welfare as to make 
it a model for public servants to imitate, and 
who as a private in the ranks by his active 
and unselfish labors in every effort to pro¬ 
mote the interests of his country exempli¬ 
fies in his daily life those qualities which go 
to make up the “Ideal Citizen.” 















CONTENTS 


Foreword. 

I. Government. 

II. Government and Business. 

III. Labor and Capital. 

IV. Politics and Parties. 

V. The Socializing Trend. 

VI. The Farmer. 

VII. The Private Citizen. 

VIII. Patriotism. 

Afterword. 



FOREWORD 


HPHE chapters following are written mainly for 
the benefit of the average men and women 
who compose the mass of our people, and who 
need an interpreter who speaks their language. 

For the vast literature bearing upon the sub¬ 
jects treated in these brief chapters is appar¬ 
ently intended for the learned and the majority 
of us have to dig mighty hard for the little we 
get out of it. 

These chapters are written in plain, every-day 
language. There is no hair splitting as to the 
meaning of words. Some friendly critics think I 
have not gone into sufficient detail, overlooking 
the fact that I am not trying to show the carpenters 
just how to build the house, but am trying to show 
them what kind of a house we must have if it is 
to stand. 

Changing the metaphor, I may say that the pic¬ 
ture is painted with a wide house brush rather 
than with a finger wide sash brush. Nevertheless, 
though I have avoided much detail in order to 
spare my readers, there will be found in each 
chapter, practical suggestions as to the things 
which ought to be done. The main purpose is to 
help along good citizenship, by presenting in a 
large way the dangerous evils of our civic life, 
and in an equally large way presenting remedies. 

I am not undertaking to tell in infinite detail how 


t 


8 


FOREWORD 


things must be done, but am telling that there 
are certain things which must be done. All per¬ 
sonal or partisan bias has been eliminated and an 
earnest effort has been made to present funda¬ 
mental truths. 

Some criticism is to be expected from each 
class by those who can only see through class 
spectacles, but I trust that in view of the inspir¬ 
ing motive which is service to my countrymen, 
and the brevity with which the subjects are treat¬ 
ed, I shall have a measure of kindly judgment. 
Lest some may think the criticisms found in Chap¬ 
ter V are not in accord with a preceding para¬ 
graph, I desire to say that those criticisms are not 
born of partisan bias or enmity, but are simply 
expressions of righteous indignation, because of 
evil doing such as the world has not before known. 

No attention has been paid to the canons of 
book making, nor has literary style been given 
an inning. 

My earnest wish is that these pages may be 
helpful to the plain folk who are more concerned 
about the substance than they are about the dress¬ 
ing up, and that they may arouse thought which 
will result in action along right lines. 


Shall the Republic Live? 


CHAPTER I 


GOVERNMENT 



HE subject we are starting with is government. 


A You will think I am slow in getting around to 
it, but you have to lay the foundations before you 
can build a house. You are all thoughtful people, 
and you will be able, as this is very simple, to 
follow it; but I would like for you to follow it 
carefully as what is said is the result of pretty 
close observation covering many years. Even if 
you disagree with me, that does not matter, 
though I believe most of the conclusions I have 
come to you will be forced to accept. The one 
merit to which I shall lay claim for these is that 
the thinking is absolutely straight. I make no 
apology for what may seem to some of you elemen¬ 
tary for it is precisely at this point we break down. 


Competition Versus Co-operation 


The social ills of humanity have grown mainly 
out of the acceptance of an erroneous theory of 
natural law. We have accepted as natural law 
the theory of competition and this has resulted in 
great disaster to the world. There is no such 
thing as the natural law of competition. The natural 
law is co-operation, which is the precise reverse 
of competition. The Apostle Paul sensed this as 
the true law in his epistles to the Corinthians, 
Romans and Ephesians when he spoke to them of 


9 



10 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

the necessity of co-operation and referred to the 
different members of the church body as the 
hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears, but together 
making up one body. Again, in the growing of 
the grain from which our bread is made, we find 
co-operation between the man, the horse, the land, 
the sun, the rain and the seed. All these enter 
into co-operation to make that crop of grain. The 
only competition comes from the weeds. Do you 
think the farmer considers the weeds that com¬ 
pete with him a valuable factor in farming, a nat¬ 
ural law that helps him make a crop? There, as 
everywhere else, the result of competition is evil. 

We are governed by the law of co-operation. 
Every union, every organization, every church, 
every corporation, every government indeed is a 
recognition, sometimes unconscious, of the law 
of co-operation, but this recognition is limited and 
partial. Man has not yet progressed far enough 
to recognize the oneness of humanity and the ad¬ 
vantages of universal co-operation. Therefore, his 
recognition of the law of co-operation stops always 
short. It is only in little groups, little parties and 
little factions that the law is, to his mind, worth 
using. I will not here touch upon the evils of 
competition as this will come later. 

Government, however despotic or absolute, im¬ 
plies some measure of co-operation by the govern¬ 
ed. That is a fact. We cannot get away from it. 
While our historical knowledge is limited back of 
a certain point, we know that organized govern¬ 
ment has existed for 5000 years. Notwithstanding 


GOVERNMENT 11 

this long experience, governments are still in the 
experimental stage. 

Political and Governmental Facts 

The dictionary will tell you that “politics is the 
science of government." I don’t suppose there 
was ever a more glaring misstatement. It was 
taught me in my youth and for a long time I 
accepted it. One day it dawned on me that there 
was no science of government and if there is no 
science of government, where does that leave poli¬ 
tics? Why, it leaves it as the practice of govern¬ 
ment and it would not be far from the truth if I 
said it was the malpractice of government. There 
has never been a science of government and for 
a very good reason. Science means exactness. 
The chemist knows by experimental proof that if 
he combines certain substances he will obtain a 
specific, definite result; but the chemist deals with 
inert or passive substances. Government's raw 
material is the human mind. No two human minds 
are exactly alike. Nothing is so variable, so flex¬ 
ible, so uncertain, so active, so slow, so obstinate, 
so narrow, so liberal, as the human mind. No 
governmental chemist, if I may use that expres¬ 
sion, can ever combine the human material into a 
formula that will invariably produce a definite 
result. 

Let us briefly consider some of the older govern¬ 
mental forms. Whether a Sennacherib in Assyria, 
a Thothmes in Egypt, an Artaxerxes or Cyrus or 
Darius in Persia and Babylonia, the dominant idea 
was always absolutism which was to some extent 


12 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

modified by custom varied by assassination. In 
this earlier period the Jewish theocracy stands 
out as a remarkable divergence from the prevail¬ 
ing idea. Coming down the line to Greece we find 
so-called democracies with Sparta and its limited 
monarchy isolated from the rest in governmental 
ideas. The little Grecian governments were not 
true democracies but rather little republics con¬ 
trolled by a ruling caste. Then comes Rome, a 
military republic, in which, while the common 
people had representation through their tribunes 
and sometimes consuls, the government was dis¬ 
tinctly in the hands of an aristocratic senate. We 
must give Greece credit for some democratic 
thought far in advance of the times, but the Gre¬ 
cian practice did not measure up to the Grecian 
theory. Each of these in turn imposed its civ¬ 
ilization upon a large area, each of them ruled 
these areas for a time and each of them went 
down in time to ruin as the result of the human 
failure to guard against the evils of power and 
prosperity. That has been the universal rule. 

One hopeful thing needs calling to your atten¬ 
tion. However complete the ruin, and though it 
has involved aeons of time, each succeeding cycle 
of civilization has traveled further than the pre¬ 
ceding before being overtaken by destruction. 

Some History We Should Know 

Now, when the western Roman Empire went 
down and the “Dark Ages” as we justly term the 
centuries between the third and the tenth cen¬ 
turies of the Christian era settled down upon the 





GOVERNMENT 13 

world, the outlook was most hopeless for the 
human family. But a new factor had come into 
the equation. The Christian faith came into life 
and action and during the black millenium the 
leaven was at work in the minds of men. As we 
look back upon the monstrous crimes of the Dark 
Ages it seems almost incredible that any good 
seed could survive such a carnival of murder, 
savagery and misgovernment. Government had 
literally become a matter of the strong and brutal 
hand. Venice and Genoa, Spain and Poland, with 
their centuries of warfare against the infidel built 
up a belief in the Christian faith which, supple¬ 
mented by the Crusades and the shrewd manage¬ 
ment of church authorities, gave to a nominal 
Christianity a complete domination over 95 per 
cent of Europe. Notwithstanding church abuses, 
however, there were pure and pious men who be¬ 
lieved in the practical application of Christian 
ethics and here we come upon the seeds of a 
real democracy. The seed was feeble, the soil 
mostly was not fertile and the growth was slow. 
The Barons who wrested Magna Charta from King 
John were fighting the battles of all succeeding 
ages, though they did not know it. The Swiss at 
Morgarten, at Sempach, at Morat and at Nancy 
were doing the same thing. Martin Luther in 
Germany, the Waldenses, the Vaudois and the 
Huguenots in France, bloody minded old Henry 
VIII, “a great blot of blood and grease,” as Dick¬ 
ens calls him, were fighting our battles, though 
only an inspired vision could have then seen it. 


14 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

Coming down to the seventeenth century we 
find in Eastern Europe a huge, loose-jointed 
empire, under despotic government, just emerg¬ 
ing from practical barbarism. Turkey, another 
despotic government, ruled by wholesale mur¬ 
der in the Balkans, Germany was a congeries 
of little independent states having nothing in 
common but language. Italy was in like case, ex¬ 
cept that many of its provinces were under for¬ 
eign rule. Poland was a misgoverned common¬ 
wealth with elective kings. Spain, the greatest 
power in Europe and under despotic government, 
had vast colonial possessions. France, a com¬ 
pact and fertile country, was in the last stages of 
exhaustion because of the constant wars of the 
despotic Louis XIV. The Netherlands had not 
fully achieved independence of Spain, though it 
was in sight. Austria was the dominant power in 
the so-called German empire. In England the seed 
was being sown for the desperate struggle soon 
to eventuate in bloody civil war between King 
and Commons. 

Switzerland and the Netherlands represented 
the concrete democratic sentiment of Europe with 
England lagging along behind. The first English 
settlement in America was just being made. A 
cursory glance would seem to justify the opinion 
that 130 or 140 generations—say 40 centuries— 
had not done much for humanity, but the big drift 
had set in and, as we shall see, with vastly accel¬ 
erated momentum. 

Jump 200 years. We find an independent re¬ 
publican United States, a republican France and 


GOVERNMENT 


15 


Switzerland; limited constitutional monarchies in 
Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Great Britain, 
a weakened Spain, Austria and Turkey, and a 
powerful kingdom of Prussia in Germany. The 
gains of those two centuries had surpassed all the 
gains of all the ages before! 

Jump another 100 years and we find astonishing 
results. From 1600 to 1800 the world had made 
greater progress than in all the previous ages, 
but from 1800 to 1900 the progress was immense¬ 
ly greater than in all previous ages including the 
17th and 18th centuries. Governmental changes 
had been enormous. All North and South Amer¬ 
ica had come under democratic institutions. 
France, Switzerland and Portugal in Europe stood 
for republicanism. Turkey had been reduced to a 
shadow, Russian autocracy was showing weak¬ 
ness; only in Germany, Austria and Japan had the 
belief in the “divine right” of kings persisted. 

Notwithstanding this apparent gain for demo¬ 
cratic ideas, old theories had maintained sway 
over the minds of men and many thoughtful men 
have been impressed with the seeming failure of 
democratic government. We come now to the 
root trouble. 

We Have Had the Wrong Foundation 

In every age, in every civilization, in every form 
of government, the moral has been subordinated 
to the material and the downfall of each recurring 
civilization has been primarily due to the subordi¬ 
nation of the moral to the material. 


16 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

This is an inversion of the proper order which 
has exacted fearful penalties in the past and will 
continue to do so as long as we permit it to remain. 

During the past 100 years, this subordination of 
the moral to the material has become more mark¬ 
ed than ever before. Men are more frankly wor¬ 
shippers of material success than even in the 
Dark Ages and efficiency has become a fetish 
both in business and in government because effi¬ 
ciency is supposed to make men more certain of 
material success. To show you the unsoundness 
of this idea, I need only cite the case of Germany 
which is the nearest approach to a scientific and 
efficient government the world has ever seen and 
that wonderful government has carried, as a direct 
result of its science and efficiency, its philosophy 
of materialism so far as to boldly proclaim that 
“might is right.” “Let him take who hath the 
power and let him keep who can,” is its doctrine. 
Even our materialistic and unmoral world is 
shocked and stands aghast at such a rank reversion 
to barbarism. 

We have noted the constantly increasing rate 
of speed in certain sort of progress during the 
past 300 years. Every sign indicates that this 
rate of speed is likely to be accelerated rather 
than lessened during the present century. If I 
am right in my forecast, one of two things must 
happen before the century ends. The destruc¬ 
tion of our civilization and universal anarchy 
if we let things drift; or a finer civilization than 
the world has ever dreamed, provided we have 


GOVERNMENT 17 

the virtue to substitute a moral for a material base. 
Which will it be? 

I am neither hopeful nor pessimistic. There is 
much to be said on both sides of the argument, 
but the strongest argument in favor of changing 
our base is the frightful chaos which now obtains 
as a result of unmoral and immoral national con¬ 
duct. 

History reveals to us that government fatalities 
in each cycle of civilization have been 100 per 
cent. Is that not a pregnant fact which should 
arouse the most profound thought? Curiously 
enough, we find men jogging along in the old ruts 
and chattering about theories which have already 
failed. 

The Contrasting Theories of Government 

While there are many shades of opinion as to 
government and its functions there are two domi¬ 
nant schools of thought: the Conservative (or 
Standpatter) and the Liberal (or Radical). In 
every country but our own these two schools work 
under well defined party organizations, but in our 
country chaos reigns. We find Democrats who are 
standpatters, Republicans who are liberals, Pro¬ 
gressives who are moderates and others who are 
radicals, Socialists in like case and a new phe¬ 
nomenon of late years in the States’ Rights Re¬ 
publican. Party names mean but little in America 
now. 

The essential difference in the two dominant 
schools of thought is that the Conservatives be¬ 
lieve the first duty of government is to property, 


18 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

while the Liberals believe that its first duty is to 
man. This means that the Conservatives believe 
in the material base and the Liberals in the moral 
base. 

Our Revolutionary fathers were probably neither 
better nor worse than ourselves. They were the 
product of an age which had been dominated by 
the Conservative idea. It was not, therefore, sur¬ 
prising that in the making of a Constitution they 
tied us up so tightly as to hamper forward move¬ 
ment along right lines, while on the other hand 
they showed, in many ways, remarkable acumen 
for men who had grown up under the conditions 
which had environed them. That they were pa¬ 
triots no man can doubt and their failures were 
due to their training and to the marked limitations 
of human foresight. It took one of the bloodiest 
wars in all history to correct one of their errors 
and in the process of correction other evils took 
root which now have overshadowed the Republic 
and threaten its very life. 

For fifty years we have been trying to amend 
admitted evils by the process of statutory laws, 
which has resulted in the creation of a vast mass 
of complicated legislation. It seems to me we 
have been trying to “muddle through” in the 
Anglo-Saxon way because we have lacked the 
courage to face the situation by making a new 
organic law and providing explicitly therein what 
government is. I am forced to believe that this 
step must be the first one taken if we are ever to 
put ourselves on firm ground. I very much ques¬ 
tion if any generation, however wise and patriotic 


GOVERNMENT 


19 


it may be, is wise enough to legislate for future 
generations. The dead hand cannot be trusted 
safely to guide living people. No reflection is 
made by that statement on those who have passed 
on. It is merely a statement of fact. 

I am rather of the opinion that government 
should be defined every fifty years for fear that 
we drift under the influence of the “dead hand’' 
which inevitably leads to the hardening of the 
governmental arteries and senile decay. 

What, then, is government? 

Man, in the patriarchal and tribal states, pre¬ 
ceded organized government. Then man created 
organized government. Undoubtedly the motive 
was to supply himself a tool which would more 
effectively promote the general welfare. He did 
not contemplate this tool as an end, but as a 
means to obtain a desired end. This is true, re¬ 
gardless of the form of government. In autocra¬ 
cies, the strong and the unscrupulous, by hook and 
crook, drew to themselves all the powers and 
benefits of government, making of the commons 
mere beasts of burden. Conservatism, or stand- 
patism, was the natural outgrowth of those who 
were (or are) the beneficiaries of a prevailing 
system, however bad the system might be for the 
masses. Liberalism, on the other hand, is the 
growth of the altruistic spirit and its seed is 
found in Christian ethics which for 19 centuries 
has been seeping into the minds of men. The 
natural trend of conservatism is toward a magni¬ 
fying of government and a minimizing of the in¬ 
dividual. The very flower of this trend is in evi- 


20 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

dence in a modern Germany where the accepted 
doctrine is that “the State is everything, the in¬ 
dividual nothing” and that “man exists for the 
state.” This is the exact opposite of the truth, 
for it makes the thing created greater than the 
creator. On the other hand, we in our country 
and the English in their country have so magni¬ 
fied the individual as to impair our ability to co¬ 
operate and have thus in a large measure con¬ 
tributed towards lessening our government’s 
value. 

Ideal government, therefore, would be one where 
full recognition is given to individual values, and 
the sovereignty of the people, while at the same 
time giving such popular co-operation as would 
enable government to meet every emergency with 
prompt and effective action. This would involve 
a closer affiliation between the people and the 
governing body than has ever obtained in any 
modern democracy. The governing body should 
be the leader, the suggester, and the means should 
be provided whereby prompt response could be se¬ 
cured. I will not discuss here how best that may 
be done, though I have opinions as to the methods, 
but will pass on and show you briefly the utter 
failure of the bi-cameral or double chamber sys¬ 
tem of legislation. 

In Latin America governments the Senate is 
everywhere an insignificant figurehead, all real 
legislation coming from the house of representa¬ 
tives, or deputies, as they are in some places 
called. In England, the House of Commons is 
supreme, while in France, Italy, Spain, Holland, 


GOVERNMENT 


21 


Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Greece 
the chamber of deputies (or as we say the lower 
house) rules. 

The exceptions to this rule are Germany and 
the United States. In Germany all real power, 
outside of the Kaiser and his coterie, is lodged in 
the Bundesrat, or upper house, the Reichstag be¬ 
ing merely a place where the people play at gov¬ 
ernment. In our country the Senate claims and 
holds equal power with the House of Representa¬ 
tives and is the strong intrenchment behind which 
reactionary forces of the country lie in wait to 
defeat progressive measures, or, failing to defeat 
them, to obtain concessions. 

We have recently seen how a dozen senators 
were able to hamstring the government in a great 
emergency and yet one of this dozen disloyal men 
still remains at the head of the Committee on 
Foreign Relations. One does not need to go furth¬ 
er to see that the Senate has outlived its use¬ 
fulness. 

I would call your attention here to another pe¬ 
culiar fact. Ours is the only democratic country 
in the world where a Supreme Court can nullify 
an Act of Congress. This brings us down to a 
vital matter. A supreme court, consisting of nine 
men, holding office for life, actually controls the 
government. Can you conceive of a more un¬ 
democratic state of affairs? 

Where We Fail in America 

I come now to two reasons why our government 
is not all that it should be. One of these reasons 


22 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

deals with the private citizen and will be discussed 
at length in a later chapter. The other deals with 
office-holding and will be briefly referred to here. 
Let me lay down a premise which I believe to be 
a fundamental truth. In a Republic, outside of 
clerical positions, office-holding should be an hon¬ 
orable incident in the life of the citizen and not a 
lifetime pursuit. 

It is the violation of this principle which is 
largely responsible for governmental ills. Should 
we establish a new organic law, under which no 
President or senator could succeed himself, and 
no representative could serve continuously for 
more than four years and then take all patronage 
from these officials beyond the appointment of 
their private secretaries, we would see an im¬ 
provement so great it would be startling. As long 
as we permit men to make careers of office-hold¬ 
ing, we encourage them to fritter away the brain 
and energy and time which belong to the public 
(during their terms) in building up their political 
machines, either to hold what they have or to 
enhance their political fortunes. In this system 
lies one of the greatest dangers which faces us 
in the future. It has already done us much evil. 

Governments do not as a rule rise above the 
average level of the people who maintain them. 
Thus, when we have poor government, it is be¬ 
cause the supporting people average low in quality 
and when we have good government the support¬ 
ing people average high in quality. It is well to 
remember this when we criticize government. 


GOVERNMENT 


23 


Under every form of government the shrewd, 
the unscrupulous, the ambitious, will endeavor to 
pervert government into a tool for their personal 
enrichment and advancement. By the measure of 
their success in accomplishing their ends, we can 
gauge the general intelligence of the people who 
maintain the government. 

Definition of Democratic Government 

I wish to give here a definition of what I be¬ 
lieve to be a correct form of democratic govern¬ 
ment: 

Government is the combined strength of all the 
people to do for the general welfare of all the 
people those things which acting individually or 
in groups the people are not strong enough to do. 

There is no perfected science of government 
and it is therefore essential that the conduct of 
the government shall be entrusted to men of lib¬ 
eral and progressive minds who will not allow 
the governmental usefulness to be crippled by be¬ 
ing bound in a strait-jacket made of ancient tra¬ 
ditions and precedents. For lacking a perfect¬ 
ed science of government it is appearent that gov¬ 
ernmental policies and even principles must 
change with the changing conditions of humani¬ 
ty. A democracy that is not fluid must inevitably 
perish from hardening of the arteries. 

I believe that is a correct definition of what 
democratic government ought to be. Anything 
short of that is stationary. But life is not sta¬ 
tionary. It has been said that there is only one 


24 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

unchanging thing in the world, and that is change. 
Everything is changing. Now to undertake to 
build a government on a foundation which never 
changes is ridiculous, when you come to think 
about it, because the law of life is change. The 
world keeps moving forward and government is 
like everything else. The foundations you build 
today will be out of plumb one hundred years 
hence. It has always been so and will always be 
so as long as the mind of man is the mind of man. 
Therefore, I am a radical; I can’t help but be a 
radical. I could not be a standpatter, because it 
is contrary to the law of life, but until we get to 
the point that we are willing to base government 
on actual conditions we will always be experi¬ 
menting and the lost motion is frightful to con¬ 
template. I am not one of those who believe that 
this is the worst government on earth. It does 
a great deal of fine work, and there are a thousand 
and one ways in which our government serves us 
excellently and effectively, but there is a lack of 
that close spirit of co-operation between the gov¬ 
erning body and the people which should enable 
the government to serve us promptly in great 
emergencies. The reason lies in the political sys¬ 
tem we have allowed to grow up and which is go¬ 
ing to destroy us unless we destroy it. We allow 
men to put their political fortunes, and the for¬ 
tunes of the political organizations which they 
uphold, before the interests of the whole people. 

This can only be amended by taking away from 
men the opportunity of making office holding a 
career. In conclusion, it must be accepted that 


GOVERNMENT 


25 


Government has unlimited power m so far as the 
rights of its own citizens are concerned; that 
vested rights must never for an hour be permitted 
to stand in the way of the general welfare, and for 
those who are shocked at such a statement, let 
them consider for a moment the fact that the 
power of condemnation granted public utility cor¬ 
porations is a frank recognition of that principle. 




CHAPTER II 

GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 


I N the last chapter I wrote about Government. 

I tried to show where government had started 
from, what had developed, what sorts of govern¬ 
ment the world had had, what we have now and 
I worked out finally what I thought was a fair 
definition of democratic government. That defini¬ 
tion I want to repeat as the starting point of 
this chapter. 

“Government is the combined strength of all 
the people to do for the general welfare of all 
the people those things which, acting individually 
or in groups, the people are not strong enough 
to do.” 

I think that is a fair definition. I explained a 
little further that there was no perfected science 
of government. I may add that there never will 
be so long as the mind of man is the mind of man. 

“There is no perfected science of government, 
and it is therefore essential that the conduct of 
the government shall be entrusted to men of lib¬ 
eral and progressive minds who will not allow 
governmental usefulness to be crippled by being 
bound in a straight jacket made of ancient tradi¬ 
tions and precedents. For lacking a perfected 
science of government it is apparent that govern¬ 
mental policies and even principles must change 
with changing conditions of humanity. A democ¬ 
racy that is not fluid must inevitably perish from 
hardening of the arteries.” 


26 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 27 

Now, this is true: It does not matter what 
form of government you may have, whether it is 
an autocracy, an oligarchy, a democracy, a repub¬ 
lic or a constitutional monarchy, certain things 
must be conceded to government. It controls our 
lives, our liberties and our property. But we have 
narrowed our conception of government in a way 
which has worked us a great deal of harm, and 
remember what I have just said, “to do for the 
general welfare of all the people those things 
which acting individually or in groups the people 
are not strong enough to do.” That is not a limi¬ 
tation of the functions of government. I speak 
of democratic government. The only limitation is 
the limitation of opportunity. If the government 
has the opportunity then it is its business to do 
anything necessary for the general welfare. 

May Governments Enter Business? 

I am going a step further in this chapter, taking 
up government and business, and I am going to 
show, if I can, that it is a perfectly legitimate 
function of government to go into business, if by 
so doing it can serve with advantage the general 
welfare. One of my friends recently said to me 
something like this: (By the way, he is an office¬ 
holder. I don’t know whether or not that fact has 
anything to do with his views). He said he could 
conceive of its being right and proper for a gov¬ 
ernment to go into business, so long as it did not 
make any profit on that business. I said: “Why 
stop there?” He replied that profit-making was 
not a proper function of the government. Let us 


28 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

see how that looks. There is a government in the 
world of only twelve hundred thousand people, 
which has a public debt of $250,000,000. That it 
about 40 per cent of the people of Georgia, with 
a public debt of two hundred and fifty millions of 
dollars! It is incredible! But that public debt was 
created for public utilities. That is, the public 
owns and operates its telegraph and telephone 
lines, its railroads, its harbors, and even its coal 
mines. It owns all public utilities in that country, 
but it does not operate the coal mines except 
occasionally when the private mine owners get 
too greedy. 

Now, those people make a profit on their gov¬ 
ernmental business—they make a profit so great 
that they do not know that they carry that debt. 
They have alsolutely no interest to pay, no taxes 
to pay, in order to carry it; the profits take care 
of the investment. It is a country in which there 
is equal suffrage. Men and women vote on equal 
terms. A man now living, and who is at the head 
of that government, made a statement that twenty- 
five years ago, when suffrage was first considered, 
he thought it was a mistake and opposed it. In 
the light of twenty-five years of experience he was 
forced to admit that he was mistaken. It is, in¬ 
deed, the purest democracy on earth and has the 
largest percentage of voters in its elections of any 
nation in the world. In other words, if in the 
United States we were to vote 80 per cent of the 
citizens in any election the country would be abso¬ 
lutely startled, and yet 80 per cent of the regis¬ 
tered vote is a customary thing in that country. 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 29 

That Is an illustration of what the extension of 
governmental functions has done for those people. 
It has made them take an active, intelligent inter¬ 
est in that country and its affairs, resulting in 
which they have been able to break up land 
monopoly. They have more home-owners in pro¬ 
portion to the population than any other nation 
except France. This country is 'way over at the 
antipodes—at the other end of the earth. It is 
New Zealand. Yet the people are mainly of the 
same stock as ourselves — English, Irish and 
Scotch. The reason why they have done these 
marvellous things is that they made up their 
minds to break loose from tradition and preced¬ 
ent. What I am telling you is not theory. It is 
something that has been done. What else do 
they do? 

Why, the government will insure your life at 
half the rate we pay in this country. They will 
haul fertilizer free to the farmer on the govern¬ 
ment railroad, on the theory that it helps him 
make a bigger crop and the higher freight on the 
grain in harvest season will make the free haul¬ 
ing profitable. In other words, the common wel¬ 
fare is the first consideration. They find it profit¬ 
able to have government related to business in 
that way. In America that sounds “academic.” 
Our people are not educated up to it. If we 
should take one hundred as the standard of gov¬ 
ernment (of course no government is perfect), 
then I should say that our government was about 
fifty per cent effective. The reason is that we 
are no more than a fifty per cent people. A good 


30 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

friend said the other day that the curse of Ameri¬ 
ca was mediocre people, and added “one of whom 
I am which,” and as a matter of fact there was a 
good deal of truth in what he said. Do you know 
that the establishment of the Post Office Depart¬ 
ment was viciously fought? It is a fact. After 
the federal government was established and the 
constitution adopted, the establishment of the 
postal department was fought by gentlemen who 
did not believe that handling the mail was a gov¬ 
ernment function. That it was an interference 
with private business which was unwarranted. At 
that time, it cost twenty-five cents to send a letter 
from New York to Philadelphia, and at that rate 
it would have cost about $5.00 to send one from 
New York to San Francisco. You can see the 
narrowness of the idea of the conservatives who 
did not believe in any extension of government 
functions. 

Now, in the last chapter I touched upon com¬ 
petition and co-operation. I want you to get this 
idea: that competition is not a natural law. You 
know it’s not so. The natural law is co-operation. 
It is susceptible of proof, but we cannot stop here 
to go into argument. Competition is a man-made 
device, born perhaps of the original sin, greed and 
weakness of the human animal, whereby he seeks 
to take advantage of the other fellow. If you do 
not believe it, see how the so-called law of com¬ 
petition is working in Europe now. 

How We Bred Trouble 

At the outset of our country, we had a very thin 
population along down the Eastern fringe and an 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 31 

immense area of virgin soil. No roads, no fac¬ 
tories, no schools to amount to anything, and the 
subduing of this continent created, or brought 
about a race of men who were unusually self- 
reliant, unusually independent and they developed 
a remarkably individualistic trend. Now, in these 
excellent qualities lay the seed of much of the 
trouble which has come upon this country by 
reason of business conditions and business growth. 
The ability to co-operate was lost. If you will go 
back and read the story of the American Revolu¬ 
tion, you will wonder how they ever won the 
struggle when the colonies were at cross purposes, 
refusing to co-operate, jealous and hampering each 
other, driving Washington to despair at the fail¬ 
ure of our people to unite, and it is said that our 
General Greene, in the South, was heart-broken 
over the conditions which confronted him and 
which he could not mend. It took men of unusual 
character to overcome conditions created by the 
character of the people. As we increased in 
numbers, and in facilities, the virtues in our char¬ 
acter—self-reliance, independence and individual¬ 
ity—became vices because we refused to become a 
co-operative people. I have heard a lot of people 
who were strong on tradition and precedent and 
short on sense talk about “competition being the 
life of trade.” In other words, it is the “life” of 
trade for me to try to cut my neighbor’s throat, 
and for him to try to cut mine. It is the life of 
trade for him to destroy me, or the life of trade 
for me to develop good muscles and good legs in 
order to escape. Competition comes right down 


32 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

to that sort of cut-throat proposition. When I 
began to take notice of conditions many years ago, 
I found this to be true, that every default in busi¬ 
ness, every sharp practice in business, and every 
bit of greed in business was justified by the theory 
that it was necessitated by the law of competition 
—a law which never had been a law, which never 
had existed, which was only a man-made device. 
And as we grew in wealth—as always happens— 
man’s greed kept pace with the increasing wealth 
of the country. When I was a boy, a man worth 
$25,000 in my county was a pretty substantial 
citizen, a man worth $50,000 was a nabob; and a 
man worth $100,000—I don’t think there was any 
in my section—was very wealthy, he was a prince, 
as a friend used to say: “Why that man is rich!” 
What is $100,000 now? Just get in your minds 
that immense jump in a few years until we have 
fifty million and twenty-five million dollar men, 
and men worth ten and five million all over the 
country. You see, therefore, that man’s appetite 
has increased with the ability to gratify that appe¬ 
tite, and I mention it because it brings into line 
what I want to show directly. I don’t know, some¬ 
times, if I am grateful that the Lord gave me a 
head to think with, because it has occasioned me 
much trouble, and deprived me of a lot of pleasure 
I might have had in things that didn’t take any 
brains. Thinking is troublesome business. Still, 
I had to do it. And here is a thought that dawned 
on me—that the fellows that got this big money 
never rendered the big service. Now, don’t mis¬ 
understand me, I am not making a fanatical at- 




GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 33 

tack on them. There have been very few men in 
the world who have ever been worth to the world 
fifty million dollars, and therefore few men en¬ 
titled to take from the common wealth that sum, 
or anything near it. There have been men occa¬ 
sionally who were worth that much to the world, 
but they never collected it. Edison is worth it. 
Walter Reed, who discovered the yellow fever 
mosquito, was worth it, but you find it absolutely 
true in every case that the men who have done 
the big service for humanity never collected the 
big reward, and the men who have done less 
service have been reaping the profits. 

The Evolution of Business 

The corporations began to take shape about 
forty years ago. It did not take the corporations 
long to relaize the advantages of limited co-opera¬ 
tion and it was only a few years later when two, 
three, five or more corporations began coming 
together to get still greater strength, and the 
next idea on which they hit was how to manipu¬ 
late the stock proposition. The New York Stock 
Exchange became the vehicle. That institution 
has done more evil to the people of the United 
States than everything else I know anything about. 
It has absolutely corrupted the business morality 
of these United States. Its operations last year 
amounted to twenty-three billions of dollars, more 
than the total value of all the railroads, twice the 
value of the farm crops and eight times the value 
of the mineral product. All this wealth involved 
in one year's gambling transactions in New York. 


34 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

And there you get the secret of these fifty million 
dollar fortunes. The stock is exploited by men 
who stack the cards. We hear much about the 
railroad question, and the condition the railroads 
are in, and the reason why is that there are 1387 
living railroad corporations in the United States, 
capitalized with watered stock to the extent of 
eight billion dollars more than was ever invested. 
The street railways operate on the same watered 
stock plan. I came to the conclusion that either 
we had to run all our railroads as one corporation 
under the regulation of the United States, or else 
we had to take them over as a direct government 
proposition—one of two things. Now the reason 
the railroads are in that shape is that the stock of 
the railroads has been used as counters in the 
gambling game in New York City. The manage¬ 
ment of the railroads has been made secondary to 
the gambling manipulation. 

Now let us take cotton. The future board of the 
New York Cotton Exchange, which is a gambling 
institution, was established in 1868. In the 49 
years of its existence, it has cost the cotton pro¬ 
ducers eight thousand millions of dollars. You 
don’t know what that means. Neither do I. The 
human mind cannot grasp such figures. How do I 
arrive at them? I want you to get the process 
so you can understand what goes on under the 
name of “business.” I took the forty years pre¬ 
ceding the creation of the future board, leaving 
out the four years of the Civil war, which were 
abnormal. I took the average price of cotton per 
pound and the number of bales grown. Tfien l 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 35 

took the following forty years and figured the same 
way and found that though there was a greater 
per capita use of cotton in the second than in the 
first period, the price was $18.50 per bale less. 
What made the difference? The future board. 
The other day a good business man said to me 
that all business was a gamble. I wrote a paper 
on “What Is Business,” and a magazine which 
does not often agree with me reproduced it be¬ 
cause in that case it did agree with me. That 
magazine is “American Industries,” the official 
organ of the National Manufacturers’ Association, 
and when those people agree with me, I think I 
have said something. 

But read the article for yourselves: 

What Is Business? 

“No word in our language is so misused as 
‘business.’ Nor in any other one thing under the 
sun is there greater misconception than there is 
as to what constitutes ‘business.’ 

“The dictionary, or academic meanings have 
been largely lost sight of in the economic changes 
and growths which have made ‘business’ the most 
potent word in our language. 

“It is important, therefore, that we get a real 
grasp on what ‘business’ really means. 

“A broad, though correct definition, would be 
that business is the exchange and distribution of 
the products or commodities resulting from the 
labor of man and the result of which exchange 
and distribution is that we live. 



36 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

“The farmer, the miner, the manufacturer, the 
fisherman, for example, are producers. The mer¬ 
chant, the banker, the shipmasters, the railway 
men are distributors. Here and there one finds a 
lapping over, but generally speaking, these defini¬ 
tions are correct. All these are ‘business men.’ 
Going a step further we find doctors, lawyers, 
scientists, authors, explorers, etc. These men are 
both producers and distributors, for they add to 
the world’s useful knowledge by their labor and 
research, and then give it out for the use of all 
men. Certainly it would be fair to class them as 
a valuable division of the army of business men. 

“There is another class which poses as a part of 
the business army which has no claim to member¬ 
ship in the army of producers and distributors, 
because it renders neither the one nor the other 
service. This class is composed of ‘speculators’ as 
they term themselves, but who are in fact simply 
parasites and gamblers. These men do more harm 
to legitimate business and real business men than 
all other causes combined. They produce nothing 
but paper contracts and distribute only evil prac¬ 
tices. When we produce fifteen million bales of 
cotton, and the speculating gentry turn over 300 
million bales we know that 285 million bales are 
gambling deals where no actual delivery of pro¬ 
ducts was ever contemplated or made. 

“So of wheat, if we produce 600 million bushels, 
and the turn over is 3,000 million bushels, we 
know that 2,400 million bushels represented the 
gambling deals. 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 37 

“In 1916 the speculative transactions on the New 
York Stock Exchange represented some 23 billions 
of dollars—more than the total value of all the rail¬ 
ways of the country combined, more than twice 
the total value of our farm products, eight times 
the amount of our mineral products. 

“Remember that these men were neither pro¬ 
ducers nor distributors—merely gamblers and par¬ 
asites. Who reaps the profit of this enormous 
volume of paper dealings? The profits go to that 
shrewd contrivance of ordinary gambling houses 
known as “the Kitty," and these parasites own 
and operate “the Kitty." 

“It may be laid down as a truism that parasites 
and barnacles are never helpful to the men or 
things to which they attach themselves. 

“In preceding paragraphs you have read what 
business is and who are business men, now re¬ 
member this, the speculator, or accurately speak¬ 
ing, the gambler, is not legitimately a business 
man. The reason why can be briefly stated. In 
a legitimate business transaction both parties are 
always benefited, whereas in speculative trans¬ 
actions all the benefit goes to ‘the Kitty,’ but 
comes out of the legitimate industry or business 
of the country." 

In a legitimate business transaction, both parties 
ought to be benefited. I want a pair of shoes. The 
man across the street sells shoes. He gets a 
profit on my purchase and I get what I require. 
He performs a useful service in the community. 
Both parties receive a benefit. It is not always in 
the shape of money. 


38 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

We have permitted to grow up in this country 
a condition, however, whereby nearly all the profit 
goes into the hands of gamblers and exploiters. 
You will say that is a broad statement. The 
United States Steel Corporation made $333,000,000 
last year which was applied to dividends on their 
common stock. When this corporation was organ¬ 
ized 16 years ago, it did not invest a single dollar 
in its common stock. It was issued on the strength 
of bonds issued by the old companies when the 
United States Steel Corporation was promoted. It 
was water. And that is the common stock which 
last year brought these dividends. When we talk 
about the “wonderful prosperity” of the United 
States Steel Corporation we are talking about the 
wonderful prosperity of a group of high grade 
gamblers. What is the government going o do 
with them? Is our democratic government con¬ 
tributing to the welfare of all the people of the 
United States when it permits things like this to 
happen? You and I may not be conscious of this 
wrong. It may not be direct. But you and I con¬ 
tribute our mite to that concern. If I buy a pound 
of nails, I contribute to it. If I rent a house, I 
contribute to it, because I help reimburse the 
builder of that house for the nails and other hard¬ 
ware he has bought to put in it. Now this is a 
sad reflection upon the moral sense of the Ameri¬ 
can people. These things happen and the people 
will not look back, nor take the trouble to investi¬ 
gate. They are tco lazy. And most people who 
know won’t take the trouble to tell them. I have 
made it my job to preach some of these things, 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 39 

because I think people ought to know them, and 
it is a function of our common government to cor¬ 
rect them. It is the most arrant and silly non¬ 
sense to talk about “unscrambling” these corpora¬ 
tions through suits. There is but one way to get 
at these people, after we have allowed things to 
come to this point which should never have been 
permitted, and that is by taxation. We have got 
to educate our people so that these corporations 
can be taxed out of their unjust profits. Perhaps 
someone will say that we don’t need the money. 
Don’t we need the money? Ask my friend Logan 
to tell us his experiences in our city of Atlanta. 
I was thinking about a cartoon for the papers on 
the school situation. I thought of drawing a 
school building so filled with girls and boys that 
the sides of the house were all puffed out. That 
would illustrate the way our schools are over¬ 
crowded. And our school teachers—are they 
properly paid? Most of them are women, and 
they are paid little more than a laborer’s wage. 
There are a thousand and one places where we 
need money. I could talk for the next three hours 
about where we could use this money. We have 
got to take from these men this money which they 
have unjustly taken from the American people. 
It is unjust, because the stock does not represent 
a real investment. 

They have loaded us with watered stock to the 
extent of billions of dollars and are taking the 
profits of the country to pay dividends on it, and 
we have got to take these fortunes back for the 
general benefit of all. Now you may say that 


40 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

sounds Socialistic. I have been called a Socialist 
and an Anarchist. I am neither the one nor the 
other. But I have an abiding faith in justice. We 
speak of these men as “great financiers" when 
they are plain, every-day robbers and very high 
class gamblers. Captain Kidd, who used to sail 
the seas and sink a little ship occasionally, and 
get a few bags of gold was an infant—a little, 
innocent baby, alongside these modern financiers. 
He would not have been fit for an office boy. The 
wages he earned would not have paid for a private 
secretary to one of these financiers. But we have 
practically made them a gift of this money. I 
made the statement a while ago to a man who 
comes in contact with some of these financiers, 
that they had very ordinary ability, and he said: 
“Why, I found that out myself.” The faculty of 
acquiring money in certain cases is not by any 
means an evidence of a very high order of intelli¬ 
gence and these people have simply used us, be¬ 
cause our government is not effective, and our 
government is not effective because we do not 
make it so. Do you not see why it is necessary 
for our people to be educated and the only way 
to educate them is to keep hammering it into 
them? Sometimes I feel like an old professor 
when I was at the university, who used to say: 
“I wish the Lord would permit me to bore into 
the heads of you boys with an auger. I don’t 
see any other way in the world to get any sense 
into your heads.” People are too busy, they are 
too indifferent; or they are hysterical; they lack 
stability and a people like that are in danger. 


GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS 41 

They are in danger of destruction as a nation be¬ 
cause they refuse to inform themselves. We 
have got to go to them. 

Government in Business 

As will be shown in Chapter V, our government 
has done and is doing a great deal of business. 
Our Postoffice Department is a tremendous busi¬ 
ness run solely for the public benefit—hence it is 
conducted at low cost to the users. 

Our land reclamation work, our forestry work, 
our ship-building and food control work (caused 
by the war), our munition plants and arsenals, 
are all examples of the government in business 
for the purpose of contributing to the common 
welfare. Only recently California has gone into 
the land business as a State by placing a consid¬ 
erable sum of money in the hands of a board 
which is authorized to buy large tracts of land, 
divide into small tracts, and sell to actual settlers 
on long time, and at prices no more than sufficient 
to pay cost and operating expenses of the board. 
Slowly it may be, but surely, the people are learn¬ 
ing that their power may be used through govern¬ 
ment to contribute to their business welfare. 

Government and Business 

This brings us to the basic thought on the sub¬ 
ject of this chapter. 

Democratic government as the voice of all the 
people has the right, and as the strength of all 
the people has the power to control, supervise, 
and direct every kind of business so that the 


42 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

common welfare will be promoted, and if such 
control, supervision or direction shall fail to make 
any business a genuine contributor to the promo¬ 
tion of the common welfare then government has 
both the right and power to expropriate or abolish 
such business as may seem best for the public 
interest. Socialism? Not a bit of it. Just plain 
common sense, and it is this underlying truth 
which is killing off the liquor business. 

The next enemy to be assailed is speculation 
which is in no sense an honorable business con¬ 
tributing to the common welfare, but a game 
rigged up by the few for the benefit of the few, 
and which in fact operates to the injury of the 
great majority. For no man has the moral right 
to engage in a pursuit which injures the many 
that he may gain, and when government gives him 
the legal right to do so, while it does not indeed 
transcend its powers, it does show a criminal in¬ 
difference to the common welfare. When govern¬ 
ment so acts it is high time for the people to 
change their public servants. 


CHAPTER III 

LABOR AND CAPITAL 


T ABOR precedes capital. There would be no 
capital but for its antecedent labor. Labor is 
the living man. Capital is the dead dollar. The 
dead dollar can only become the live dollar by 
the application of the labor of the living man. 
The laborer with empty pockets may look with 
envy over a vast acreage of untilled fertile land 
representing capital, but it is as certain as fate, 
that the untilled lands will produce no dividends 
until the empty-pocket laborer and others like 
him have applied their muscle to the growing of 
crops on that land. Capital is merely the stored 
up fruits of labor and to give capital the prior 
claim over labor is to put the plow before the 
horse and to say that the thing created is greater 
than the creator. It is the wrong view of these 
two factors in our economic life which is responsi¬ 
ble for many of our economic ills. 

It is true that morally speaking, no man has a 
right to profit by the labor of another man, but 
as not more than one man in a million believes 
that truth it is not now a practical question and 
no time need be wasted in discussing it. We can 
only strive for the establishment of more equity 
in human relations. 

A little gain has been made. The holding of 
human beings as chattels, slaves, which was com¬ 
monly accepted only a little while back is now uni¬ 
versally recognized as immoral and uneconomic. 

43 


44 


SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

For that system we have substituted a wage 
slavery which has quite as many evils as chattel 
slavery had, and our next great step will be to 
grasp the truth as to wage slavery and to do 
battle for a more righteous system. Human greed 
is at the bottom of all our ills. Out of human 
greed has grown the infernal competitive system 
which fathered, first chattel slavery, and then 
wage slavery. 

As a logical sequence there followed great for¬ 
tunes in money, land, and personal property of 
various kinds. It will take us a long time to 
learn that limitations must be placed by law on 
the amount that any one individual may take 
from the common earnings of mankind and the 
amount of land any one person may hold. 

It is sheer nonsense to claim that one individ¬ 
ual can in an ordinary lifetime render such service 
to the world as to justify his taking in payment 
50 to 500 million dollars, or many thousands of 
acres of land. 

The few men in history who have rendered 
service of such transcendent value have never 
collected the millions they justly earned by their 
service to humanity. If you doubt this consider 
such men as Timoleon, John the Baptist, Savona¬ 
rola, Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Wash¬ 
ington, Abraham Lincoln, and even our own Edi¬ 
son, greatest inventor of all the ages, does not 
rank with the big multi-millionaires. The shrewd, 
the strong and selfish, the cunning, the unscrupu¬ 
lous, are the beneficiaries of the present system. 


LABOR AND CAPITAL 45 

But the world does not exist for the benefit of 
the few, even though that few be elect men, and 
humanity must come to a proper knowledge of 
real values, and see that men are rewarded not 
according to their greed, but according to their 
deserts. 

Naturally it will occur to the reader to ask how 
this change for the better is to be brought about. 

That question brings us back to co-operation. 
There are but two possible roads for the economic 
life of the world to travel. One is the road of 
competition, which after thousands of years has 
brought us into a quagmire of hatred, envy, and 
bloodshed. The other is the way of co-operation. 
This way means more kindness, more justice, no 
bloodshed, no multi-millionaires. It means a hap¬ 
pier and a more contented humanity. It may not 
spell such rapid progress in some directions, but 
in view of the results of the world’s phenomenal 
progress in the last two centuries we may well 
question if that progress has been an unmixed 
blessing. 

The primary difficulty lies in the fact that nearly 
all the human family are “tarred with the same 
stick.” 

Practically all are striving not for a world in 
which equal justice shall prevail for all but for a 
world in which each striver shall gain some ad¬ 
vantage over his fellow. 

At heart the laborer is no whit more unselfish 
nor more just than his capitalistic neighbor. 

World history abundantly proves that state¬ 
ment. But world history also proves that each 


46 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

cycle of civilization breaks down because of its 
iniquities. If, therefore, we are to save our civili¬ 
zation and make it better we must realize the 
necessity of a change of policy. The ideal policy 
would be the practical application of the Golden 
Rule, and for that we should work diligently but 
while waiting for that good day to come we must 
fall back on an enlightened selfishness. This en¬ 
lightened selfishness will teach us that in order 
to make the world more tolerable for ourselves 
we must consent to let it be tolerable for the 
other fellow. It will teach us that human nature 
improves so slowly that we may not hope for the 
ideal system becoming operative all at once, and 
therefore, we must be content to mend things a 
bit at a time, always keeping in view the main 
purpose of a more tolerable world. The world 
today is not socialistic, and from all present in¬ 
dications is not likely soon to be. We must there¬ 
fore, accept present conditions as the starting 
point in our equation, and then see if we cannot 
work out to a conclusion which will be equitable 
to all who work. 

Under present conditions labor and capital are 
essential to each other. That is the starting point. 
Those who advocate socialism are crying for in¬ 
stant change of economic conditions, but some of 
us who have been studying economics and the 
human animal for a long time know that they are 
butting their heads against a stone wall. 

Only in sporadic and rare cases will men blow 
up the building they have with the idea that they 
can put up a better one the next day. 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 


47 


The human mind is habituated to the thought 
of labor and capital as complementary to each 
other. It is, therefore, easier and more certain 
of results to shape the tools we have in such 
manner as to work steadily towards betterment 
of social conditions, rather than to destroy our 
tools and start over again with naked hands. 

No intelligent man will deny the existence of 
evils, but every intelligent man must realize that 
we cannot eliminate those evils at one fell swoop, 
except at a cost so appalling that the human race 
will not face it. 

Co-operation is the key, and the improved social 
order must be built upon that, each year pushing 
ahead a little, and each year cutting out some of 
the evils which have resulted from unrestricted 
competition. 

The practical question is what shape shall this 
co-operation take? 

Many experiments have already been made, 
bonuses, profit-sharing, co-operative colonies, etc., 
but there has not been up to this time a general 
and frank recognition of the principle of partner¬ 
ship between labor and capital. To a sorrowful 
degree the present position is one of sullen oppo¬ 
sition to each other by two parties who must 
work together, and who have so far been unable to 
see that working in harmony would be more con¬ 
ducive to the welfare of both than the present 
attitude of each seeking the advantage. 

It becomes imperative as the very first step 
that the men of labor, and the men of capital must 






48 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

disabuse their minds of the wicked and dangerous 
fallacy that the one can prosper only when the 
other loses. 

That theory is not based on sound business 
principles, but on the gambling idea that the one 
must lose in order that the other may win. 

The resources to be handled by men are ample 
to maintain all in comfort, provided all of us are 
willing to concede that each worker in whatever 
capacity he may work, is entitled to his share of 
the general proceeds. 

In the past much unwisdom has been shown by 
both labor and capital. No one can deny that. 
Hard and fast systems and institutions have grown 
up to which both parties are wedded. To better 
conditions, and to eliminate evils, we must open 
up our minds, let the pure air of fair play and 
justice get into our mental lungs, and meet on 
the plane of friendship, rather than that of hos¬ 
tility. Let each side give to the other a patient 
hearing, let it be understood in the beginning that 
the thing desired is to get together on an equitable 
basis, rather than to get the advantage. Recog¬ 
nize the human equation. Let it be fully under¬ 
stood that while the laborer must live in some 
degree of comfort, the capitalist cannot continu¬ 
ally do business at a loss, for that would spell the 
coming of the day when he would be forced out 
of business. 

The spirit of comity will always get better re¬ 
sults than the spirit of enmity. 

Great as may be the evils of the day they are 
not comparable with the evils of bygone centuries 


LABOR AND CAPITAL 49 

when war was men's steady vocation, and peace 
only a vacation season. 

We have made some gain, and these troubles 
which seem to us so acute and distressing are 
only the incidental growing pains in man’s onward 
march toward that perfect industrial state which 
is his ultimate goal. We stand today at the part¬ 
ing of the ways. If we continue to travel along 
the road we have been following we will find the 
obstructions becoming constantly more numerous, 
the ruts deeper, the rocks bigger and we will 
finally come to the end of the road in a quagmire 
where we will all perish together. 

On the other hand if we switch over to that 
branch of the road outlined in preceding para¬ 
graphs, we will find it not altogether smooth 
traveling, but the roughness will decrease with 
each passing year, and we will finally debouch 
upon the pleasant plains of peace and plenty. 

Why should we not choose the better way? The 
only reason that can be given is the surviving bad 
streak in humanity from that far gone day when 
every man considered every other man as his 
enemy. The good in us develops slowly, the evil 
dies hard. There is no essential difference be¬ 
tween the mental bias of the laborer and that of 
the capitalist. If they refuse to accept the bet¬ 
ter way because it is the better way, then let 
them accept it because even an enlightened self¬ 
ishness teaches that it is the more profitable way. 

For strife is not profitable either to winner nor 
loser. There is no sort of doubt that if every 
dollar of wealth in the world was equally dis- 




50 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

tributed among all men today, and no other 
change made in the social order, in ten years the 
mass of mankind would be poor and the minority 
would have the wealth. 

As previously said, the mental bias of laborer 
and capitalist does not essentially differ, but the 
mental capacity of the one is greater and the 
faculty of acquisitiveness is more largely devel¬ 
oped, hence an equal division would not mend mat¬ 
ters. The only way out, therefore, lies along the 
road of comity between men. With fair wages 
to men, sick and accident benefits, old age pen¬ 
sions, and educational advantages on the one 
hand, and a fair return to capital on the other, it 
would only take a couple of generations to put 
humanity on a plane so much higher than the one 
we now occupy that our grandchildren would pon¬ 
der with amazement on the stupidity of their an¬ 
cestors. 

To bring about this comity we must free our¬ 
selves from some of our inherited beliefs, and re¬ 
verse our way of stating things. 

Thus we must free ourselves of the idea that 
capital is the older brother who alone may decide 
what labor, the younger brother, shall receive. 
We must accept the truth that labor and capital 
are not an aggregation of men and masters, but 
a firm consisting of equal partners in which labor, 
by reason of greater age, is the senior partner. 
This will not mean that the senior partner shall 
decree arbitrarily what the junior shall receive, 
which would simply mean harking back to the 
old way, with dictators reversed, but it would 





LABOR AND CAPITAL 


51 


mean that the partnership interests must be 
agreed upon after thorough investigation and mu¬ 
tual agreement. 

Prophecy is a dangerous thing, but it requires 
no gift of prophecy for any intelligent and thought¬ 
ful man to see that to continue to travel in the 
road which has brought so much woe upon the 
world will inevitably lead to anarchy where we 
will all perish because we have failed to use the 
intelligence which God has given us. 










CHAPTER IV 


POLITICS AND PARTIES 

“POLITICS,” as previously stated, is not the 

* science of government, there being no such 
thing as the science of government, but is the 
practice of government. 

Practice of any calling, or profession, or trade, 
calls for tools, and the tools used in the practice 
of government we call “parties.” 

It is a fact, grasped by few people, that the 
words or names, which we use in speaking of the 
things of life, have a tremendous influence in 
shaping our mental attitude and our actions 
towards things of vital importance. 

If we belittle a great matter by misleading 
words, or titles, or slang, we create in the public 
mind a condition which results in great harm. 
Our American people are the greatest sinners in 
the world in this respect. We have unfortunately 
a gambling streak which makes us class every¬ 
thing as a “game.” And so politics has grown to 
be a “game” with us. In like manner we speak 
of men who are candidates for public office as 
being in a “race.” It does not matter whether it 
is a presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, may¬ 
oralty or aldermanic campaign, the candidates are 
“racers.” 

We degrade the greatest of our public functions, 
government, to the level of a “game.” We de¬ 
grade men who are striving for the most import- 

52 


POLITICS AND PARTIES 


53 


ant positions in our civic life to the level of four- 
footed beasts. They are “racers.” This flippant 
way with which we deal with matters of gravest 
importance has brought us to the point where too 
many of our people seem unable to think soberly, 
and intelligently, and the most important prob¬ 
lems are dismissed with a joke, or else dealt with 
from the standpoint of inherited or class prejudice 
rather than from the standpoint of reason and 
patriotism. 

Another misstatement of terms is responsible 
for many of our woes. Men constantly speak of 
belonging to the Democratic, or Republican, or 
Progressive, or Socialist, or Prohibition parties. 
This erroneous method of speaking works enor¬ 
mous damage. The political party is merely a 
tool designed theoretically by men of similar views 
with the idea of getting their political ideals put 
into effect. As such tool it belongs to the men 
who created it. It follows, therefore, that a small 
fraction of the party “belongs” to each citizen 
affiliated with it, and the partners in the party 
do not “belong” to it any more than the partners 
in a mercantile business belong to it, for we all 
know that the business belongs to the partners. 

Out of this misstatement of fact, or miscon¬ 
ception of the party has grown a host of evils. 
Men have so long claimed that they “belong” to 
a given party that they become the willing tools 
of the men who manipulate parties, and are so 
anxious to have a regular “party” record (for that 
way preferment lies) that they follow the “party” 
through numerous campaigns, though its platform 


54 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

declarations may be a thousand miles away from 
their real beliefs, and in that way millions of 
voters are led by party allegiance, the mere party 
name, to support men who will do officially things 
that a large number of the voters abhor. 

The reason that the unscrupulous politicians 
and bosses are able to so manipulate parties as 
to defeat the wishes of the people is found in the 
ignorance and credulity of the voters combined 
with the foolish desire to be “regular” in the 
party. One can easily understand the place hunter 
crying out for party regularity, but it is rather 
more difficult to understand why the average man 
who never expects office should hold party regu¬ 
larity so sacred. The only possible reasons lie 
in his ignorance and his credulity plus heredity 
in some cases. 

This brings us up against the question of “who 
should vote.” No thoughtful man can long study 
our politics and parties without losing, to some 
extent, his grip on universal suffrage. “Manhood 
Suffrage” is a very catchy phrase, but has not that 
virtue in its practical application ascribed to it 
by all politicians and many thoughtless people. 
To speak of the “voting franchise” is to admit at 
once that voting is not an inherent right, but is 
a grant agreed upon by the government makers 
to be allowed to certain persons in order to get 
a basis for Democratic Government. This fran¬ 
chise has been restricted in many nations, at many 
places, and in many periods. Today the voting 
franchise is denied in many States of our country 
and in many other countries, to women. And yet 


POLITICS AND PARTIES 


55 


suffrage is not universal if women are denied, and 
certainly there are just as many good reasons for 
giving all women the vote as there are for giving 
it to all men. 

Here we strike an unpopular truth. There is 
no good reason for universal suffrage either for 
men or women, and there is every good reason for 
demanding certain qualifications of all voters 
whether men or women. This demand that the 
voter shall be qualified for full citizenship should 
not be based on a property qualification and need 
not be based altogether on an educational quali¬ 
fication. A fair system would be for each candi¬ 
date for registration at the age of twenty-one to 
stand an examination before the registrars to 
ascertain if such candidate has an understanding 
of the simpler fundamentals of democratic gov¬ 
ernment and a practical knowledge of the struc¬ 
ture of his government—national, state, county. 
Failure to pass the examination and obtain a 
diploma of citizenship would mean not permanent 
disfranchisement, but that the candidate might 
return again year after year, for a fixed term of 
years, for a new examination. If at the end of the 
period fixed the candidate has failed to pass and 
obtain a diploma, the disfranchisement would be 
permanent. On the removal to another county or 
State of the holder of a diploma, the presentation 
of the diploma to the registrars in the new local¬ 
ity would entitle the holder to registration in the 
new locality. 

This system would insure a more intelligent 
electorate and make it more difficult for bosses 


56 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

to manipulate the parties. Compulsory voting 
would add much to the strength of the non-office* 
seeking public and be a factor in securing good 
government. Wilful failure to exercise the fran¬ 
chise right should result in its forfeiture for the 
very life of the Republic hinges on the exercise 
of that right. 

The voting franchise should be a badge of honor, 
and to some extent a certificate of good citizen¬ 
ship. Another and most dangerous defect in our 
system is the habit of so many of our people to 
belittle politics, and count it a reproach for one 
to be keenly interested in politics. 

Every citizen should be a keen politician, for 
“eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The 
man who prides himself that he “takes no stock in 
politics” is not only a fool, but it also a bad citi¬ 
zen. Under an intelligent franchise system there 
would be a larger percentage of the voters cast¬ 
ing their ballots, whereas under the present loose 
system the franchise is not valued, and anywhere 
from 25 to 50 per cent of the votes do not go to 
the polls. Many men who think they are intelli 
gent often do not vote for years and years. 

Organized political parties should be held to a 
strict accountability for their platform declara¬ 
tions. These platform expressions should be 
counted a contract with the people to be carried 
out when the people entrust the platform-makers 
with the power to make the laws. This would tend 
to briefer and more concise platform declarations, 
and then if upon gaining power the party refuses 


POLITICS AND PARTIES 57 

to carry out their promises the people should have 
the power of recall against such unfaithful serv¬ 
ants. 

The common practice by the party in power of 
putting the supposed interests of the “party” 
before the interests of the country as a whole can¬ 
not be too strongly condemned, and the legislator 
should be as truly the servant of the whole people 
as the postmaster, even though the legislator be 
pledged to certain platform promises which a 
minority does not like. A common abuse of the 
party system is the passage of laws which are 
nullified by the courts declaring them unconstitu¬ 
tional. For this there is absolutely no excuse. 
From 60 to 80 per cent of the American Congress 
are always lawyers. For such a congress to pass 
a law which is later declared unconstitutional is 
an outstanding proof of the legal incompetence of 
the men who passed it, and it is obvious that men 
of such small legal ability have no proper place 
in the legislative body. 

There are two reasons for this failure in our 
law-making. One is the small ability of the men 
who phrase the law and muddle it with a world 
of unnecessary verbiage, and the other is the fact 
that the “party” feels committed to some legisla¬ 
tion it does not want to pass, and purposely draws 
a bill that the courts are certain to destroy, and 
the “party” thus saves its face with the public 
and makes a scape-goat of the courts. 

If the practice of politics was pure the legal 
committees of the Congress would be so strongly 
organized, and so careful in the phrasing of new 


58 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

laws that there would never be any unconstitu¬ 
tional laws. 

Citizenship, politics, should be made a part of 
the curriculum of every public school, starting 
with a primary catechism in the third or fourth 
grades and enlarging the scope each year until 
the child passes out of the schools. 

All of us are familiar to some extent with the 
corruption in American politics, but how to meet 
and overcome it is an unsolved problem. Some 
things may be suggested that might be helpful. 
The public school curriculum could be made use¬ 
ful as a basis by inculcating in the minds of the 
young that a public man who is tricky is as dis¬ 
honest and dangerous as a burglar, aye, more so, 
because he damages more people and should be 
dealt with as vigorously as we deal with the 
burglar. The holding of parties to strict account¬ 
ability as suggested in preceding paragraphs would 
be helpful. A drastic and effective remedy would 
be for the people to outlaw avowed candidates, 
and to select proper condidates by means of peti¬ 
tions or mass meetings, with the demand that the 
men so selected should serve as a civic duty. Can¬ 
didates so selected should not be expected to 
spend a lot of their own money in making a cam¬ 
paign. 

Some of our States are already moving effec¬ 
tively in limiting the amount of money which may 
be spent in campaigns. 

Greater than any of these suggestions as a 
means of betterment would be for the national 
government to spend two or three millions yearly 


POLITICS AND PARTIES 


59 


for employing able, uprlgnt, competent men, one 
to each congressional district, whose sole business 
it should be to meet the people at regular times 
and places and teach them not only as to the 
structure of government, but also explain defects 
and how these can be cured by the exercise of 
good citizenship. This would be going to the very 
root of the disease which lies in the body of the 
voters, and would do more than all else to secure 
quick results. These teachers would of necessity 
be non-partisan. They should not be young men 
fresh from the schools and colleges able to pass 
“Civil Service” examinations, but men of mature 
years and wide experience drawn from all walks 
of life. 





CHAPTER V. 


THE SOCIALIZING TREND 

M UCH is being said of Socialism and Socialistic 
ideas, but it looks as if Socialism was a long 
way from winning its way to general acceptance. 
For this there are a number of reasons. Marxian 
Socialism, which is the prevailing brand, is of 
German origin, and yet we see the German Social¬ 
ist contentedly accepting the worst militarism the 
world has known, and endorsing, the horrible 
atrocities committed by the German armies. It 
would appear from this that the German Socialist 
cares for nothing but the filling of his belly, and 
his military masters can have his aid to murder 
half the world provided he is given plenty of swill. 

The avowed Socialists have proved a tremen¬ 
dous disappointment to those who, like the writer, 
regarded them as honest people who were preach¬ 
ing some truth and some error, and whose truth 
might some day be of service to the world. Now, 
we have lost confidence in their honesty. Their 
doctrine that government should “own all the 
means of production and distribution” has never 
commended them to the masses of our people, be¬ 
cause it is not founded on an intelligent under¬ 
standing of the American character. The Ameri¬ 
can, who like the Englishman or Scotchman, has 
always been a pronounced individualist, is begin¬ 
ning to learn through his own dearly bought expe¬ 
rience that his institutions have got to be Social¬ 
ized, but that does not bring him to Socialism. 

60 


THE SOCIALIZING TREND 61 

Rather the reverse, because when he has done a 
certain amount of essential Socializing he will find 
his condition so improved, with his individuality 
still unmpaired that he will thereafter not waste 
a moment looking in the direction of orthodox 
Socialism. 

The Beginning of American Socialization 

Our postal service was our first really serious 
effort in the direction of taking under public con¬ 
trol a great and necessary utility. As far back 
as 1639 there had been attempts at making the 
carrying of the mails a public function and these 
were continued with more or less success down 
to the establishment of the Republic under the 
Constitution and the inauguration of Washington, 
when the Postal Department was one of the first 
established. Even at that late date there were 
men of ability who contended that the carrying 
of the mails was essentially a matter for private 
enterprise, and not a governmental function. But 
the conservatives did not prevail and the life of 
the postal service has been co-terminous with 
that of the government. The man who today 
should declare that the carrying of the mails was 
not a governmental duty would be regarded as a 
lunatic. 

The care and control of public highways was 
accepted by all as a governmental duty, but the 
government was very negligent of its duty, and 
many franchises were granted to individuals and 
companies to operate toll gates, toll bridges and 
toll roads, but government never for a moment 


62 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

waived its general rights in this matter. Canals 
were recognized as matters for governmental over¬ 
sight and could only be built by government or by 
persons having special charters from government. 

The great expansion of our country into unoc¬ 
cupied territory presented a big problem, and was 
solved by the government becoming the greatest 
land-owner of the world, and then practically giv¬ 
ing away its great estate bit by bit to those who 
would go in and open up the wilderness. Thus 
the government became a land dealer. Here a 
little and there a little, there was always a slow 
but steady increase of governmental functions. 
The conservatives, or strict Constructionists of 
the Constitution, fought a hard but losing fight. 

The Coming of the Railroads 

With the coming of the railroads a new chapter 
was opened that is not yet closed. As soon as the 
people recognized the possibilities of the steam 
roads they went wild with enthusiasm, and inaug¬ 
urated what has proven the greatest speculative 
campaign the world has ever known. This specu¬ 
lative era has lasted many years and is not yet 
ended. But startling abuses grew out of the sys¬ 
tem of using the great railroads as chips in a 
gambling game, and little by little the government 
which in the earlier years had been neglectful of 
its rights began to put on the brakes. The battle 
has been long and hard fought, but steadily gov¬ 
ernment has won its contentions until today no 
man questions its absolute power over our rail¬ 
way lines. 


THE SOCIALIZING TREND 63 

The Cities Move 

The rapid growth of cities occasioned chiefly 
by the development of the country by means of the 
railway lines brought its local problems of water¬ 
works, gas plants, street car lines, electric light 
plants and telephone lines. Again the division 
came between the conservatives who wanted every¬ 
thing owned by private corporations, and tha lib¬ 
erals who wanted everything done by cities. All 
over the continent the local struggles raged and 
have continued to rage. It would be fair to say 
that the battle has up to date been a draw, with 
private ownership having somewhat the best of it 
in number and value of public utilities owned. 
Bearing in mind that at the starting point private 
owners had everything and the public as repre¬ 
sented by city government had nothing, it will be 
easily understood that private owners have lost 
much ground. The fatal mistake of private owners 
was that in their haste to accumulate millions 
they anticipated profits by watering stocks and 
continue to do so, learning nothing from the past, 
and their downfall is inevitable. 

The Panama Canal 

A great factor in this socializing trend has been 
the building of the Panama Canal. Here was a 
tremendous enterprise. A vital necessity to the 
nation, because it meant not only the linking of 
the West with the East in an extra bond, but also 
meant the doubling of our ship power. Its stu¬ 
pendous size, the enormous amount of money in- 


04 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

volved, and the certainty that the ordinary capi¬ 
talistic methods could not be used, forced its build¬ 
ing as a governmental enterprise. We now see 
and understand how vitally necessary it was, re¬ 
gardless of cost. But we also see that we have 
a great national asset worth hundreds of millions, 
which because it represents no watered stock, will 
in the not remote future be earning dividends upon 
cost to say nothing of the national value which 
cannot be computed in money. Here is an object 
lesson which cannot be shut out from sight even 
though some of us might wish to do so. 

Land Reclamation 

In the arid and semi-arid West are millions of 
acres of fertile lands which must be watered by 
irrigation if they are to be fruitful. Many thou¬ 
sands of home makers began to look at these lands 
with eager longing years ago. But there was no 
water. Private capital was doing a little towards 
bringing into use some of these idle acres, doing 
the work in its own way, and at its own price. It 
became apparent that to depend on private capital 
would not serve the purpose, and so government 
stepped into the breach. Great dams and reser¬ 
voirs and irrigating canals have been built; mil¬ 
lions of acres have been reclaimed, and many 
thousands of prosperous families are domiciled 
on these lands. The cost of the work without a 
profit is apportioned out over a long term of 
years so as to make it easy for the home makers 
to pay. 

This work is a splendid illustration of the prin¬ 
ciple that “Government is the combined strength 


THE SOCIALIZING TREND 65 

of all the people to do for the general welfare of 
all the people those things which acting individu¬ 
ally or in groups the people are not strong enough 
to do.” 


Other Socializing Tendencies 

The Departments of Agriculture and Labor with 
their manifold activities; the Bureau of Health 
with autocratic power in times of epidemic and 
supervisory power at all times; the recognition of 
the State’s duty in the matter of education are all 
but expressions of the widening of our horizon, 
and the growing demand that democracy should 
fulfill its mission of giving a constantly better 
service to the men and women who uphold its 
banner. 


The Recasting of Our Views 

Despite the natural conservatism of the race; 
despite the traditions of centuries; despite our 
human stupidity; despite the powerful reactionary 
influences of those who profit by the system that 
is; despite all these things and more, we are 
rapidly recasting our views as to governmental 
functions and powers. 

The conditions created by this thing we call 
modern civilization are forcing us to see, often 
against our will, that we must accept new methods, 
demand new standards, and widen the field of 
governmental usefulness. 

We are beginning to learn that no limit can be 
placed on the power of the whole people repre¬ 
sented by government where the general welfare 


H6 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

is concerned. We are beginning to realize that 
Democracy is not our little set rules, our little 
States’ rights, our little forms of procedure, but 
rather a tremendous “Force” representing all the 
power of all the people which “Force” the people 
have concentrated in the thing called government, 
and which Force the people propose rhall be 
exerted for the benefit of all the people through 
the tool created for that purpose, which tool is 
government. 

For government belongs to us and not we to 
government. 

Are Our Liberties in Danger? 

Not a bit. As we increase in popular intelli¬ 
gence, as we begin to clearly grasp the utility of 
this governmental force which we have created, 
we will constantly keep a check on those who 
would pervert the community power to their own 
uses. Those timid souls who fear centralized 
power should bear in mind that the power is 
always with us; if decentralized it is unregulated, 
uncontrolled and liable to be destructive, whereas 
when centralized it is controlled and made useful. 
A mighty river running over rapids represents 
wasted power, whereas, the same river dammed 
and controlled represents useful power. It is the 
province of the people to learn how to control and 
use the power which lies under their hands. We 
must admit that this they have not done in the 
past, but he is a poor observer who does not see 
the dawn of a better day. It is quite possible that 
this good day will not come to its full splendor 



THE SOCIALIZING TREND 67 

until oceans of human hlood have been spilled; 
the years may be filled with human suffering; but 
the seed has fallen on some good ground and our 
children and our children’s children will see the 
full glory of the beneficence of Democratic power 
when that power is harnessed so that its full 
force is exerted for the common welfare. 

What the Great War Has Taught Us 

It has taught us much both as to our strength 
and our weaknesses, but probably the biggest 
thing that has come out of it is a more general 
knowledge that human greed must be limited by 
governmental agency. That means socializing 
our activities in ways that would not have been 
contemplated for long years but for the lessons 
taught by the war. Consider the railways. At 
the outbreak of the war they were in parlous con¬ 
dition. The long years of “high finance” had 
finally cost them the confidence of the country 
and investors had grown shy of railway securities, 
and distrustful of railway management. 

The war acted as a tonic by creating more 
traffic thus enabling the roads to get money for 
some urgent needs, and though by no means able 
to get all their needs, it seems possible that the 
roads may come to the end of the war in better 
physical condition than they were at the begin¬ 
ning. It must be admitted that railway managers 
have responded nobly to the demands made by 
the government for war service, and yet there is 
a constantly growing feeling that the final end 
of the railway problem is government ownership, 


68 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

and this feeling is as certain to be concreted into 
action as anything yet in the future can be certain. 

The telegraph and telephone lines, the gas and 
electric plants, the street car lines and water¬ 
works, all these things are traveling the same 
road. In these things which we class as public 
utilities the trend is plain. 

But the war has opened up a new field, and one 
constantly hears the suggestion that the public 
should own and operate the coal, and iron, and 
copper mines, and the oil fields. Will it come to 
that? I am no prophet, but can reason a little, 
and it would not be surprising if at no distant 
period the government should expropriate these 
sources of raw material. All the big things re¬ 
ferred to being governmentally owned, and closed 
to speculation, there would yet remain an enor¬ 
mous field for private exploitation. The release 
of a part of the capital now employed in the inter¬ 
ests above mentioned would be helpful to mer¬ 
cantile, banking, agricultural, mechanical, ship¬ 
ping and manufacturing interests. It would not be 
surprising if the general prosperity of the country 
would be greatly enhanced, for with unerring judg¬ 
ment the public has pointed its finger at those 
interests where public ownership would be most 
helpful to the public. 

It is a notable fact that no one who suggests 
public ownership as above indicated, ever goes 
outside those lines, except an occasional Socialist. 
And the Socialists are now utterly discredited 
among real Americans, and justly so. The Ameri¬ 
can people are going to Socialize their institutions 


THE SOCIALIZING TREND 69 

in so far as seems wise to them, but they are not 
going to accept a Socialism which indulges in cant 
about the brotherhood of man and denies God; 
which prates about elevating humanity, and winks 
at loose family relations; which prates of its love 
of peace and gives its support to the most bloody 
minded people the world has known; which wants 
to reform human institutions, according to its 
word, but has no real love for any principle above 
swill. 





CHAPTER VI 
THE FARMER 
The Problem Presented 

A GRICULTURE is the basic industry. Upon it 
as a foundation we have pyramided a huge 
and complex civilization. For two generations we 
have expanded the upper stories until the weight 
resting upon the foundation is growing too great. 
We must proceed intelligently to strengthen that 
foundation, or face the certain sinking of the 
entire structure. 


Manufactures, Banking, Commerce, these three 
interests which should be merely the incidents of 
life, based on essentials, have been allowed to 
usurp places in our economic life which do not 
belong to them, and this usurpation has created 
a condition which forbodes evil beyond imagina¬ 
tion. 

This forced development of these collateral 
interests has resulted in a system which makes 
the economic life of the world revolve around 
what we call “Foreign Trade,” or the International 
Trade as distinguished from Intranational Trade. 

But the Foreign Trade of the world as compared 
with the internal trade of the nations is at the 
most liberal computation not over 8 per cent of 
the total. 

Our manufacturing, banking and commercial 
interests are increasing by tremendous leaps; our 
cities are growing like Jonah’s gourd; our indus¬ 
trial population is reaching gigantic proportons; 

70 


THE FARMER 


71 


our population settled on the land is decreasing in 
relative strength, and by reason of these things 
our cost of living constantly rises, while Foreign 
Trade cannot increase at a rate sufficiently rapid 
to take care of the surplus accumulated by the 
collateral interests. The trouble grows out of the 
lack of understanding of real values. The Manu¬ 
facturer with his shops full of his wares, repre¬ 
senting great values in money, must starve if his 
bread supply happens to be cut off. The Banker 
with his vaults full of gold dollars would starve 
with the sudden stoppage of transportation and 
the cessation of the inflow of food products. The 
Merchant with his warehouses full to bursting of 
valuable wares can live only so long as he can 
convert his wares into food. 

The problem, then, is how to so co-ordinate the 
various interests which go to make up the world's 
business, that there will be no overwhelming pre¬ 
ponderance of certain interests and corresponding 
atrophy of others. Above all must we protect the 
basic interest—Agriculture. 

In the Beginning. Agriculture 

Food, clothing, fuel, these are the primary neces¬ 
sities of human life. All else is but a mass of 
frills and trimmings which we have added as we 
have become more “civilized.” The primary 
necessities all come from the land. 

Therefore, in the beginning, we had but the 
tiller of the soil, the shepherd, and the herdsman. 
All these belong to what we term Agriculture, 
which also embraces the fruit grower and the hor¬ 
ticulturist. 


72 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

From the beginning down to one hundred years 
ago, Agriculture was the paramount industry of 
the world. With the cessation of the Napoleonic 
wars, manufacturing began to move forward by 
great jumps, and this forward movement was 
greatly accelerated by the application of steam 
in industrial pursuits. 

In so far as such countries as England and Bel¬ 
gium were concerned this was a logical growth, 
because the population of these countries had even 
then become too great to be fed from the scant 
area occupied. 

The growth of Great Britain, and the volume of 
its outside trade, stimulated other European 
nations to follow suit, and in comparatively brief 
time much of Europe was a busy hive of industry, 
and the movement of population from country to 
town had taken shape. 

We became Infected in America, and “tariffs” 
became the bone of contention between political 
parties. It is well to bear in mind that the pro¬ 
tective tariff idea was born coincidentally with 
this forward movement in manufacturing. 

There had been no protective tariffs so long as 
the Agriculutral interest was predominant in the 
world. 

Then—Manufactures 

In 1861 there came into power in our country 
a party wedded to the idea that all the country 
needed to become great was to develop its manu¬ 
factures to the nth power, and that this could best 
be done through the stimulating influence of a pro¬ 
tective tariff. 


THE FARMER 


73 


We have seen the development of that idea. We 
have seen hamlets, under that impulse, grow into 
towns, villages into cities. We have seen a steady 
decrease in the relative number of our people 
engaged in Agriculture, until now less than half 
our people live on farms, and it is said that only 
one in eight of our total population is actually en¬ 
gaged in labor on our farms. We have seen aban¬ 
doned farms in our most thickly populated states. 

We have seen such a development of transporta¬ 
tion facilities as the world had never before imag¬ 
ined possible. 

We have seen speculation enthroned and men 
become millionaires without ever creating product 
of the value of a single dollar. We have seen a 
flood of securities running into many billions, 
sums so inconceivable that the mind cannot grasp 
them. We have seen financial panic after financial 
panic. 

We have seen an almost miraculous increase in 
wealth and co-incident with the increase of wealth 
an increase of poverty appalling in its extent. 

We have seen the product of our factories climb 
to twenty billions of dollars value in a single year, 
while our boundless acres were at the same time 
producing less than ten billions in value. 

Agriculture has been dethroned and Manufac¬ 
tures rule as monarch. 

This stimulated production from our factories 
has created a population of many millions which 
must be fed, and while our farmers make enough 
to feed them we have allowed a system of com- 


74 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

plex distribution to grow up which has enhanced 
the cost of the workingman’s dinner to a danger¬ 
ous point. One cannot but question if the gains 
have been worth the cost. 

Foreign Trade 

If every factory in the world was run at full 
speed for one year, the world could not consume 
the output in two years. In other words Manu¬ 
factures have outrun the need. This means that 
few factory employees can count on full time year 
in and year out. It also means that there is a 
fierce competition between the manufacturing 
nations for the small plate of Foreign Trade pie. 
Each country is trying to get the lion’s share so 
that its factories may run more time each year. 

As an illustration of the marvellous capacity of 
our modern machinery, the little country of Bel¬ 
gium, with seven millions of people on an area 
equal to our small state of Maryland, had, prior 
to the present war, a foreign trade one-third as 
great as that of the United States with fourteen 
times its population and three hundred times its 
area. Belgium is purely a manufacturing country, 
barring a few truck gardens. 

The total volume of International or Foreign 
Trade is estimated by competent authorities at 
thirty-five billions of dollars annually. The total 
volume of the Internal Trade of the United States 
is estimated by the same competent authorities 
at sixty-five billions of dollars annually. 

In other words, the United States, with about 
one-sixteenth of the world’s population, and less 


THE FARMER 


75 


than one-sixteenth of the land surface of the globe, 
does an internal trade nearly twice as great as 
the foreign trade of all the world. 

And yet, so dominating is this minority fraction 
of the world’s total trade that the outbreak of the 
European war by dislocating foreign exchanges 
has caused acute distress to neutral nations thou¬ 
sands of miles distant. The reason is not far to 
seek. Undue value and prominence has been given 
to foreign trade by the desperate international 
struggle to secure these crumbs to assist in mov¬ 
ing the machinery. 

Where Intelligence Rules 

In one country alone of all the world has there 
been a high degree of intelligent foresight used 
in developing its economic life. 

Germany has shown that a mighty expansion of 
its industrial life was not necessarily harmful to 
its agricultural interest. 

While building up immense manufacturing 
interests and securing the second largest share 
of foreign trade, it has so jealously guarded the 
interests of its farmers, that all interests alike 
prospered, and for a number of years no other 
country has been so free of economic unrest. More 
than that, on a rather infertile country smaller 
than our State of Texas, the Germans have so 
developed their agricultural interests as to feed 
sixty-five millions of people and concurrently have 
built up a great merchant marine and in a short 
forty years have changed a rather poor country 
into one of the creditor nations of the world, 


7G SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

whereas the rich United States is still a debtor 

nation. 

How has Germany done this? 

By adhering consistently to a fixed policy, which 
may be defined as a determination to conserve all 
the time the whole interest of the whole German 
people. 

No one class has been permitted to enrich 
itself at the expense of another class, and no one 
interest has been allowed to overshadow all others. 
This has not called for any superhuman intelli¬ 
gence, but it has called for a sane purpose, exact 
knowledge of conditions and steady patriotism. 
The stand now being maintained by Germany 
against the great powers of the world has demon¬ 
strated the colossal strength which any nation 
may develop by subordinating all special interests 
to the welfare of the whole people. 

What Other Nations Can Do 

France, Spain, Italy, Russia, United States, 
Argentina, can every one of them, work out as 
good economic results as Germany, with the same 
intelligent methods. 

Grant to Japan the hegemony of Eastern Asia 
and by utilizing Korea and part of Manchuria, it 
can accomplish the same result. Australia and 
New Zealand are making headway along progres¬ 
sive lines. 

Great Britain and Belgium, by reason of dense 
populations on small areas, must, to a great extent, 
look to overseas trade, but even in Great Britain 
much better results could be obtained quickly had 




THE FARMER 


77 


not that country foolishly allowed its agricultural 
interest to be destroyed in the interest of its fac¬ 
tories. 

China presents the best future market for the 
surplus of other nations, but China is a long way 
in the future, and a great development of its trans¬ 
portation facilities must precede any great increase 
in its consuming power of foreign products. 

The Present Outlook 

It cannot be denied that the present outlook is 
decidedly bad. Nowhere outside of Germany has 
there been any appreciable advance towards a 
sound economic system. 

Men lack vision, as a whole, and especially nar¬ 
row is the vision of men engaged in large manu¬ 
facturing, banking and commercial operations, 
who gauge the future by the past, and are per¬ 
suaded that they can go on indefinitely duplicating 
the abnormal increase of the past. 

But we are now in the second stage of the 
machine. Where they were few forty years back 
they are now found in multitudinous number, and 
the consuming power of humanity has not kept 
pace with the increase in machinery. 

Nothing can be expected of the men in the game. 
Relief must come from the thoughtful outside the 
ring. 

If we pursue the let-alone policy, the road to 
destruction is plain. 

A constantly increasing army of industrial work¬ 
ers in our cities, with no certainty one month, or 


78 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

one season, of work for another month or another 
season. A constantly growing of the hosts of 
chronic needy and a constantly growing intelli¬ 
gence, due to the public schools, will breed revo¬ 
lution just as surely as gunpowder thrown on fire 
will explode. 

For an ignorant people will endure suffering 
much more patiently than an intelligent popula¬ 
tion, even though that intelligent population be 
not of the stature of statesmen or financiers. 

What Must We Do? 

Certainly we must speed up on Agriculture. 

This can be done promptly and effectively so 
that in a few years this end of the problem can 
be put in proper shape. 

With equal certainty we should slow down on 
Manufactures, and this presents a much more 
difficult question. 

Much preaching is now being done to the farm¬ 
ers of America, the greater part of which preach¬ 
ing is not worth a pinch of snuff. What is 
demanded is less talk and more action. 

The present perilous situation has been brought 
about through the laches of all of us, and, there¬ 
fore, all of us must take a hand in the recon¬ 
struction. 

By all of us is meant the Federal, State, Munici¬ 
pal, County and Township Governments, the Bank¬ 
ing and Commercial interests and the Farmers 
themselves. Every ounce of power in the country 
must be applied to the task. And the road to be 
travelled is by no means a blind alley. 




THE FARMER 


79 


We must build good roads so the farmer may get 
his products to the market town or transportation 
line at a minimum of cost. 

We must provide the farmer with educational 
advantages equal to those enjoyed by towns and 
cities. 

We must see that sanitation is made a part of 
the life of the farmer, as it is of the townsman. 

We must provide efficient telephone service for 
the farmer and show him how to install cheap 
water works and other conveniences. 

We must see that the farmer is provided with 
ample capital at long-time and low rates of inter¬ 
est, not exceeding 5 per cent, with easy terms of 
payment, this capital to be provided only to pro¬ 
ducing farmers and not to speculating land barons. 

(It might be pertinent here to show the shame¬ 
less exploitation of farmers by middle men and 
financial interests, but as this discussion i~ chiefly 
concerned with most pressing conditions as they 
exist and to pointing out a remedy, it is unneces¬ 
sary to elaborate on that detail.) 

We must help him to learn how to increase the 
productive power of his acres and thus cheapen 
his cost of production. 

We must provide the means whereby the land¬ 
less man may acquire land on such terms that he 
may pay for the land out of the products of his 
own labor on the land. 

We must provide a more efficient system of dis¬ 
tribution whereby instead of farm products pay¬ 
ing toll to the transportation lines and from three 


80 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

to a half dozen middle men, this toll may be cut 
out except as to the transportation lines and, at 
most, one middle man. * Does all this look like a 
large order? It is not nearly so big a task as it 
looks if all the people will apply all their power. 
The objection has been made that with all this 
done farm products would be so cheapened that 
farming would not be an attractive occupation. 
Not so. The farmer would get as much as he now 
gets in price with a larger yield per acre, while the 
consumer by the elimination of needless expense 
would buy cheaper. 

Let me illustrate 

I have seen Michigan farmers growing 100 to 
150 bushels of Irish potatoes per acre and selling 
them at 25 cents per bushel, and I have seen those 
same potatoes retailed in Georgia at $1.20 per 
bushel, a 400 per cent increase between the con¬ 
sumer and the producer. Under the new system 
the Michigan farmer could get 200 bushels per 
acre, sell at 25 to 35 cents and the Georgia con¬ 
sumer could buy them at 75 cents per bushel. 
Both sides would be helped. A few middle men 
might have to turn farmers. 

As to the slowing down of Manufactures, there 
would be necessary a bureau or governmental 
department so organized as to be able to give man¬ 
ufacturers clear and definite information as to 
consumption in our own and other countries, and 
with this definite knowledge available men would 
not be scrambling to double capacity at every 
little temporary spurt, nor would outside men be 
so eager to embark their capital in such ventures 


THE FARMER 


81 


because A or B happened to have a good year. 
There would be less haste and less waste. 

In Conclusion 

In the last analysis, the great war in Europe is 
largely a product of economic conditions. This 
ought to be sufficient warning to world leaders to 
cause them to take stock of world conditions. 

The economic system must be reformed if our 
civilization is to stand, and the reformation must 
begin by strengthening the basic industry. 

No country has been more criminally negligent 
than our own, but, fortunately, no other country 
is so well situated to take prompt and effective 
action. 

May the God of Nations inspire with wisdom 
the men who are charged with the conduct of 
the affairs of the nations! 

Note 1 

Prince Bernhard Von Bulow, one of the great 
figures of Modern Germany, was criticised by a 
friend for his very evident partiality to the Agri¬ 
cultural interest. Pointing to a passing ship, he 
made this reply: 

“A ship without sufficient ballast, with too high 
a mast, and too heavily rigged, will turn turtle. 
Agriculture is our ballast. Commerce and indus¬ 
try (manufactures) are to be our mast and sails. 
The ship cannot advance without them. But with¬ 
out ballast it will capsize.” 

Commenting on his own reply he adds: “The 
captain of a ship must certainly try to make good 


82 


SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 


headway. But he must not acquire speed at the 
expense of safety.” 

Note 2 

This chapter was written nearly three years ago 
and published under another title. In the inter¬ 
vening years there has been a slight awakening to 
the facts, and some effort has been made along 
the lines of improvement indicated, but we have 
only made the beginning. The whole program 
must be carried out or we must pay the penalty. 

Note 3 

In Chapter V there is criticism of Germany. In 
this chapter Germany is praised. In the first case 
the criticism is because of evil doing, while in this 
case the commendation is for right doing. Both 
statements are just. 








CHAPTER VII 
THE PRIVATE CITIZEN 

E come now to the man who is the foundation 



v v of the State and the master of the State— 
the private citizen. To this class the majority of 
us belong, but notwithstanding our obscurity the 
welfare of the State depends on us, the private 
citizens. Few of us recognize the dignity which 
belongs to us as the foundation, the pillars and 
the capstone of the State, for we are the State. 
Still fewer appreciate the dignity which attaches 
to private citizens in a Republic where each citi¬ 
zen is a sovereign in his own right. But sover¬ 
eignty carries with it responsibility just as privil¬ 
eges and honors are always balanced by obliga¬ 
tions and duties. 


Responsibilities of Citizenship 


The responsibilities of the private citizen are 
quite as various in kind as those of the President. 
On him more than on the President rests the 
obligation to make for his country a good impres¬ 
sion upon the outside world, for the world sees 
many of his class and rarely a President, where¬ 
fore the world bases its opinion of America on 
the private rather than the official American. 

Then there is the responsibility of the blood. 
His fathers worked and fought, bled and went 
hungry, knew penury, wounds, suffering and often 
death that he might be at ease in a fair land of 
freedom. If he shirks the duty of his day he 
is unfaithful to the blood that runs in his veins. 


83 


84 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

Not so would his fathers have done. If he fails to 
struggle to improve his children’s condition as 
his fathers struggled to better conditions for their 
children he is unfaithful to the blood. If he 
refuses to defend his country against an alien foe, 
or internal discord, he is unfaithful to the blood. 
Not so did his fathers who fought and fell at Lex¬ 
ington and Bunkers Hill, at Trenton and Brandy¬ 
wine, at Guilford and Camden, at King’s Mountain 
and Cowpens, at New Orleans and Tohopeka, at 
Bull Run, Antietam, Chickamauga, Manassas, 
Shiloh, Mansfield, Perryville, Atlanta, Malvern Hill, 
Petersburg, Gettysburg, and the countless other 
fields where his fathers and grandfathers died for 
their convictions and country, and so dying left 
him a heritage so sacred that he cannot neglect 
it in one jot or tittle without being unfaithful to 
the blood. 

And so he is under bonds both to those who have 
preceded him and those who are to come after 
him. We come now to another class of obliga¬ 
tions, those which each citizen owes to the com¬ 
munity, the state. “No man liveth to himself” is 
both scriptural and a great truth. The private 
citizen lives surrounded by the men of his day, 
doing their work as he is doing his, well or ill, 
each according to his several ability, and his 
quality of citizenship. 

Now, to these men, his compatriots, he owes 
certain duties and they in turn are under the same 
obligation to him. If each discharges his duty 
faithfully we have a model community; if one- 
quarter fail in the discharge of community duty 


THE PRIVATE CITIZEN 85 

we have an average community; if one-half fail in 
duty we have a non-progressive community and 
unwholesome conditions; if three-quarters fail in 
duty we have a community unfit for decent men 
and women. This may sound harsh, but it is un¬ 
varnished truth. The civic health, therefore, rests 
in the hands of the private citizen. Not only the 
present, but the future, rests on him. Has the 
President any different responsibility, except in 
degree—for he deals with a larger mass? The 
private citizen, indeed, in his own community 
counts more for the weal or woe of his community 
than the President does for the whole country. 

As the Units, So the Mass 

The Republic is made up of a great number of 
these communal units, some great, some small. 
The average quality of the whole will decide the 
average quality of the Republic. If you doubt 
this analyze conditions in as many countries and 
nations as you may please, and you will find it 
everywhere to be true. 

These units are good or bad exactly in propor¬ 
tion to the degree of honor which the private 
citizen accords to his own citizenship. Find a 
small town where its citizens are pleased to serve 
as Mayor, Alderman, Councilman, and one can 
safely guarantee it to be a town where good citi¬ 
zenship is the predominant note. 

On the other hand find a small town where these 
little civic positions are sneered at and ridiculed, 
and one can be reasonably certain that such town 
is cursed with too many “lewd fellows of the 


&6 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

baser sort.” American civic life presents at pres¬ 
ent a curious paradox. It is quite certain that 
there has been a deterioation in the average qual¬ 
ity of citizenship during the past forty years, but 
on the other hand it is equally certain that the 
quality of the national government is quite as 
good as it was forty years back, and in some 
respects is probably better. It would not be 
profitable here to stop to discuss this peculiar 
fact as it would require much space to fully dis¬ 
cuss, and a cursory discussion would b3 of no 
value. 

Prosperity Responsible for Many Ills 

That the nation has prospered materially be¬ 
yond anything known to history is true. That this 
prosperity has not been equally distributed is true. 
But this prosperity has been sufficiently distrib¬ 
uted to give to every class in our country a higher 
standard of living than is known to the corres¬ 
ponding class in other countries. One might 
reasonably expect that the greater comfort and 
leisure which have come to the American people 
as a result of this prosperity would be reflected 
in an improved citizenship, but the faithful chroni¬ 
cler cannot say that such has been the case. 

What has happened? Extravagance, love of 
luxury, a mania for inane amusements, flabbiness 
of soul and to a great extent flabbiness of body, 
loss of the ability to think seriously or logically, 
absolute preoccupation with one’s own little 
scheme, a mad scramble for money with which 
to gratify these lusts of the eye and flesh, so 


THE PRIVATE CITIZEN 


87 


called comic supplements to the newspapers, im¬ 
modest fashions among women, and silly styles 
for men, the use of ever changing slang to such 
an extent that an old style English speaking per¬ 
son is often at a loss as to the meaning of words 
used in daily conversation. To crown all a nation 
of neurotics. Does not this suggest that the pri¬ 
vate citizen needs to bestir himself to better these 
evil conditions? 

Is the Private Citizen a Shirker? 

Candor compels the admission that to far too 
great extent the private citizen is a shirker. He 
shirks taxes and jury duty; military or vocational 
training; he is too anxious to start making money 
to take the time to train himself for the largest 
usefulness; as our court records show, to a scan¬ 
dalous extent he shirks his family obligations; 
and most of all he will but rarely move for the 
improvement of civic conditions or the remedying 
of an abuse because in so doing he might make an 
enemy of some man who is more powerful than 
he, and who would thus sometime be in a position 
to injure him. This lack of moral courage may 
be accounted as the greatest failing of the private 
citizen, and the one most fraught with danger. 
When it comes to a matter of physical courage he 
is not often found wanting, but his lack of moral 
courage is appalling. He bows down slavishly to 
the exploiting rich, he declines to give aid or 
countenance to movements for amendment fear¬ 
ing to antagonize the particular interests or men 
who may happen to control his town or city. 


88 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

He has reason for his fears, for the exploiters 
have shown themselves merciless in crushing those 
who oppose their will. The private citizen, there¬ 
fore, who fears not poverty, who endures with 
calm philosophy the slings and arrows of adverse 
conditions, who is willing to be misunderstood for 
righteousness’ sake, who preserves his own self- 
respect because he knows he must live with him¬ 
self, who does not envy the honest rich nor hate 
the dishonest rich, who year after year travels 
the straight road of civic duty, always sowing the 
seed of civic righteousness, is not only one of 
God’s elect, but is also one of that handful whose 
work in the years to come will abide to the saving 
of the Republic. To such an one it matters not 
that his name is left out of the local 400, that the 
newspapers are never complimenting him as a 
prominent and useful citizen, that he is often 
referred to as a Socialist, or an anarchist, or 
breeder of strife. These things he knows must 
be endured as a good soldier in that army which 
has endured every hardness that America may live. 

The Vision of the Private Citizen 
But the private citizen with all deficiencies duly 
charged up to his account still has some assets on 
the other side of the ledger. His vision is clearer 
in many things than that of great statesmen and 
financiers, because it is not obscured as in the 
one case by opportunism and as in the other by 
money. For the private citizen in the mass is 
not rich in this world’s goods, and has no ambi¬ 
tion to carry on the government as one of the 
ruling officials. 


THE PRIVATE CITIZEN 89 

As a result of this clearness of vision his mut- 
terings against an unwise policy often lead to a 
change of policy, and his demand for some better¬ 
ment often leads to a forward movement. 

I cannot go as far as those observers who claim 
that the mass mind and the mass conscience spell 
infallibility in governmental matters, but it is 
true that the mass mind and conscience are so 
often right that it becomes the part of wisdom to 
lend an attentive ear when the expression of the 
mass mind and conscience is clear-cut and 
expressed by those who speak with authority. 
And here comes in one of our greatest difficulties. 
The private citizen is mostly inarticulate; he feels 
and to some extent he thinks, but he cannot put 
his feelings and thoughts into words. And so 
there are found spokesmen, who think little and 
feel less, but who are glib of speech, and these in 
far too many cases become the mouthpiece of the 
mass. Some of these utilize their gift of speech 
to ride into office, some of them make money, 
some break down utterly from the weight of their 
disloyalty to the mass they pretend to represent, 
and perhaps one per cent continue steadfast and 
loyal to the end in the cause which they have 
espoused. If the private citizen had his union 
like the labor men, or his association like the 
employing class, he would have a vehicle through 
which his real mind and his real aspirations could 
find true expression. In view of this lack of a 
proper vehicle, which is almost universal, it is 
amazing that even a little of concrete result flows 


DO SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

from the vagarious thought and feeling of the 

private citizen. 

How Shall We Leaven the Mass? 

To leaven this largely inarticulate mass, which 
is rich in material, which the world has never 
known how to utilize we must go back to the 
A B C of things as they are and get the right 
start. We must cease our demagogic twaddle 
about our splendid citizenry, and recognize that 
while our raw material is rich in possibilities, we 
must find a way to so incorporate that raw mate¬ 
rial in the soil of our civic life that it may be 
absorbed by the soil and become the fertilizer 
which will produce great crops of civic improve¬ 
ments instead of lying in the soil, an inert and 
for all practical purposes a dead mass. 

One advantage we have; the private citizen may 
be slow, stupid, dull, foolish, inarticulate, but he 
is a living human and we need never despair of 
growth as long as we have a living something 
with which to deal. And so our problem becomes 
simplified a little. It becomes not a question of 
using a chemical reagent, hut a question of how 
to kindle into flame the immortal spark in that 
sluggish but living body. Flint struck on steel 
makes fire. If our subject is as hard and as 
resistant as steel, we who see must ourselves be 
the flint, and once the flickering little spark bursts 
into flame we must nurse it and feed it until it 
becomes a mighty blaze which will burn away the 
dross and folly and corruption of our civic life, 
and leave to our children a clean, a healthy, a 


THE PRIVATE CITIZEN 


91 


purified commonweath. Is this merely a dream? 
Let us hope for humanity’s sake that it is a fore¬ 
cast of what is to be. 

The Final Word 

And so we come to the final word. This private 
citizen is of many kinds; dull, wise, silly, shrewd, 
lazy, industrious, honest, dishonest, thrifty, waste¬ 
ful, stingy, liberal, brave, cowardly, learned, ignor¬ 
ant, generous, greedy, he combines all the quali¬ 
ties, good and bad. Not in one sample, but often 
we find many opposing qualities in the same man. 
Such as he is, he is all we have. As we look at 
him from one angle we despair of humanity, and 
as we look at him from another angle we conclude 
that the world is safe in his hands. 

So that at the last, if we be wise, we will work 
with him and for him, and in so doing we will be 
working for ourselves and all humanity. But we 
may be pardoned, if despite our labors, we find 
our civic life imperfect, our statesmen foolish and 
our administration corrupt, when we turn upon 
the private citizen, the wrong doer in that case, 
and say to him as Nathan said to David, the wrong¬ 
doer in another case; “Thou art the man.” 


CHAPTER VIII 

PATRIOTISM 



HE dictionary definition of patriotism is— 


A “love of one’s country.” I think it was the 
cynical Dr. Sam Johnson who defined it as “the 
last refuge of scoundrels.” But Dr. Johnson was 
less interested in strict truth than he was in say¬ 
ing things that would catch the public ear. It 
is true that scoundrels have used the cloak of 
patriotism to further their designs just as scoun¬ 
drels have used the cloak of religion in the same 
way. But those abuses of good things have not 
lessened their intrinsic value to the world. Patri¬ 
otism which is one of the finer virtues of our 
humanity must be an active force if it is to 
strengthen the nation and shape its destiny. 

It is not enough that we feel patriotic, we must 
act patriotic. And this action must be just as 
much a living force in time of peace as in time 
of war. The Spartans who, for love of country, 
died at Thermopylae, were patriots of the best 
type, as were the Americans who died at the 
Alamo, because their hearts burned with passion 
for liberty and they hated injustice. But these 
heroes were not more patriotic than Henry Clay, 
who in his love for that which was right, was 
willing to sacrifice the great office of President; 
or than Benjamin Franklin who, in his old age, 
fared forth over stormy seas that he might bring 
France to the support of his hard pressed country; 
or than Wilberforce, who stood like a tower for 
humanity and humanity’s rights, or than Clara 


92 


PATRIOTISM 


93 


Barton, whose name will ever be associated with 
the splendid Red Cross philanthropy. Not to 
multiply examples it is sufficient to say that 
patriotism can find myriad forms of expression 
when one’s heart is filled with love of one’s coun¬ 
try, and one’s fellow men. We suffer much more 
from the lack of active patriotism in time of peace 
than in time of war. This is due largely to our 
inability to think straight, which leads us to con¬ 
fuse partisanship, or party spirit with patriotism. 
We allow ourselves to be diverted from funda¬ 
mental things by hot political fights over matters 
of passing interest, and while the public mind is 
thus engaged crafty men who have no other use 
for their country than to exploit it for their per¬ 
sonal gain get in their deadly work, and later on 
the people have to spend years of laborious effort to 
correct the abuses which have become an integral 
part of the national structure. Thus national 
progress is hindered in its march toward civic 
righteousness, and we have to use up 50 years of 
time to do what ought to be done in 10 years. 

But that is not all. Well meaning people con¬ 
tribute to the making of the road difficult to travel 
because of that streak in humanity which makes 
each class seek its own special advantage, and 
the effort to twist government into a tool to be 
used for class advantage creates many evils. My 
idea of patriotism is that it is the love of one’s 
country and one’s fellows, not in part, but as a 
whole, and until we get that big conception into 
our minds and hearts we will continue to obstruct 
the upward progress of humanity and to create 


94 SHALL THE REPUBLIC LIVE? 

instead of one great massive column of Republican 
liberty and Human Rights a lot of little columns 
with our class rights and privileges as labels. 




AFTERWORD 


T HE title page of this booklet asks a question. 

What is the answer? He is dull indeed who 
having read the brief chapters preceding, yet fails 
to see the line we must travel in order to perpet¬ 
uate the Republic and make it a great blessing 
to humanity. The line is plainly marked and by 
no means impossible, but it is not the line of 
least resistance, and it calls for a considerable 
degree of individual virtue and therefore of 
national integrity. However, we have lived 
through 140 years of tribulation and hard work, 
and despite our multitude of errors we have devel¬ 
oped strength and shown that we really have a 
national conscience. One cannot resist the belief 
that an All-Wise God has given us His counten¬ 
ance, and stands ready to continue His favor pro¬ 
vided we show ourselves worthy. Despite our 
mistakes, if we honestly strive for amendment, 
and stand up starkly for justice, national and 
international, we will justify the opinion of those 
who believe that this government was divinely 
ordained to lead humanity upward to a finer civil¬ 
ization, and the Republic Will Live. 


95 









